fFrtmtisli~Cc'. AN ANGOLA FISHER:'IIAN Al' HO:'lIE. TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA Congo Fran~ais, Corisco and Cameroons > i§ THtGI), ~"'-' ~<' ~ C< Cf C '':> C" t. BY MARY H . KINGSLEY ?--- WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 1ionlJon MACMILLAN AND C O., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE NfACM ILLAN COMPANY A It rigltts reser;;'~d TO MY BROTHER, C. G. KINGSLEY THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED PREFACE To THE READER.--vVhat this book wants IS not a simple Preface but an apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that. Recog nising thi·s fully, and feeling quite incompetent to write such a master- piece, I have asked several literary friends to write one for me, but they have kindly but firmly declined, stating that it is impossible satisfactorily to apologise for my liberties with Lindley Murray and the Queen's English. I am therefore left to make a feeble apology for this book myself, and all I can personally say is that it would have been much worse than it is had it not been for Dr. Henry Guillemard, who has not edited it, or of course the whole affair would have been better, but who has most kindly gone through the proof sheets, lassoing prepositions which were straying outside their sentence stockade, taking my viii PREFACE ----------- ------ eye off the water cask and fixing it on the scenery where I , meant it to be, saying firmly in pencil on margins "No you don't," when I was committing some more than usually heinous literary crime, and so on. In cases where his activities in these things may seem to the reader to have been wanting, I beg to state that they reall y were not. It is I who have declined to ascend to a higher level of lucidity and correctness of diction than I am fitted for. I cannot forbear from mentioning my gratitude to l\[r. George Macmillan for his patience and kindness with me,--a mere jungle of information on West Africa, \ Vhether you my reader will share my gratitude is, I fear, doubt- ful , for if it had not been for him [ should never have attempted to write a book at all, and in order to excuse his having induced me to try [ beg to sta te that I have written only on things that I know from personal experience and very careful obsen'ation, have never accepted an explanation of a native custom from one person alon'e, nor have I set do\\'n things as being prevalent customs from having seen a single instance. I have endeavoured to give you an honest account of the general state and manner of life iil Lower Guinea and some description of the ,'aria us types of country there. In readir;g this section you PREFACE ix must 'make allowances for my love of this sort of country, with its g reat fores ts and river,? and its animistic-minded inhabitan ts, and for my ability to be more comfortable there than in England, Your supenor culture-instincts may militate against your €njoying \¥ est Africa, but if you go there you will find thi ngs as I have said. CONTENTS I NTRODUCTION . CHAPTER LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE. II CHAPTER II THE GOLD COAST CHAPTER III FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBI S CHAPTER IV LAGOS BAR 73 CHAPTER V YOYAGE DOWN COAST .. CHAPTER \,1 LIBREVILLE A~D GLASS 100 CHAPTER \'II THE OGOWE. 123 CHAPTER VIII TALAGOUGA . CIIAPTER IX THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE 166 xii CON TE NTS CHAPTER X 2 LEi\IBARENE 19 CHAPTER XI F RO:lI KANGWE TO LAKE KCQVI . 23 1 CH APTER XII FROM NCOV 1 110 ESOON . 257 CHAPTE ], XIII F ROM ESOON TO AGON}O 294 CHAPTER XIV BUSH TRADE AND FAN CUSTO:lI S . 308 CHAPTER XY DOWN T HE RE:lIBWE . . • 333 CHAPTER XVI CONGO FRANC(A1 S . . . 353 CHAPTER XnI THE LOG OF THE LafaJ1ette CHAPTER XVIII FRO:'l{ COR ISCO TO GABOON CHAPTER XIX FETI SH CHAPTER XX FETlSH-( Continued) . . CH APTER XXI I~ETISH-(Colltinued) • . •. CONTENTS ii CHAPTER XXII FETISH-(C()utiJ!ued) . 501 CHAPTER XXIII FETISH-(Couc/uded} .. 52I CHAPTER XXIV ASCE~T OF THE GREAT PEAK OF CA)IEROO~S 548 CHAPTER XXV ASCENT OF THE GREAT PEAK 01-' CAi\IEROONS-(Continued) 567 CHAPTER XXVI THE GREAT PEAK OF CAMEROOKS- ( Conti111,ed) . 581 CHAPTER XXVII THE GREAT l'EAR OF CAMEROO~S-( COllcluded) . 592 CHAPTER XXVIII THE ISLANDS IN THE BAY OF A)IBOISES . 609 APPEN DIX 1. TRADE AKU LABOUR IN WEST AFRI CA 63 1 II. DISEASE I~ WEST AFRICA 681 III . DR. A, GU)lTHER ON REPTILES A~n FI SHES. 692 IV. ORTHOPTERA, HYi\IENOPTERA , A'\"D HEMIPTER}\ 718 V. THE INVENTION OF THE CLOTH LOO).I 734 INDEX •.. ... •... .. . 737 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The illustrations to which asterisks are attached arc published by kind permission of the l\o[ission E vangeliqlle of Paris PLATES I.~A. CTEKOPO:-'IA KINGSLEY.-E. B. CT. lXANU:-'r. C. CT. GABOKENSE 692 n .-A. i\lOR:'>IYRUS KIKGStEY..-E. B. ALESTES KIl'\GSLEYJE. C. BARII.!lfS BIBlE. 694 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS AN A!\GOI..A FISHER),IAN AT HOillE . F1'0l11ispiece TO FACE PACE CAPE COAST. 26 FERNANDO 1'0 AND AMHAO ISLAND FRO"I T H I:: :\.E. 42 CALLE DE LA ;,IARINA, C LARF,l\C I~ , FERKANDO PO. 50' CALLE DE SACRA;\IE!'TO, CLA RENCE, FERNAKDO I'D 71 A TYPICAL \\'EST AFRICAN" RIYER BAKK 123 *FAr\" CIlIEF A:,\D FA:-'IILY 166 FAXS 257 M. DE BRAZZA 353 CARA\'A); FOR STA::\LEY POOL, PAL LABALLA MOUKTAINS , co"eo 358 THE FALLS OF THE XGUNIE AT SA:\IBA 369 DEATH DANCE COSTUMES, OLD CALABAR . 483 TRADE BOYS OF A CHIEF AT EQUE'nA, orOBO 492 CAMEROOKS RIVER, FRO;\I ABOVE AKWA TOW~ 567 A MA HOGA,KY TREE, GOLD COAST 63 r SHIPPIKG ?lfAHOGAXY, AXIl\! 635 xvi LIST OF ILLU STRATIO NS ----------- ILLUSTRATIO NS I N TEXT 37 0).1 A COLD COAST BEACH K I~C DU KE OF CA LA BAR IX fU LL DRESS 43 THE ;\IANGO AVEXUE, F ER N.·\XDO 1'0 47 COV ER;':OR'S PALACE, FERXAXDO PO . 55 106 H ArrON A:-;D COOKSON'S FACTORY AT CLASS. *VII;;W OF OXE BRA:'\ CH OF T HE OGOWE FROM KA::\'GWE 135 CAF I~EA Lf BIRICA-Li BERIA:'" COFFEE • STAT ION OF THE MISSION EVA:"'CE LI QUE, T.·\LACOUG.:" . SOUTH B.A.;':K OF TH E OCOWE RIVE R NEAR SE);C ELADE ISLA;\J)S . BOKO HOKO RAPIDS, OGOW I~ R I VER • SOUTH B.·\~K OF THE OGOWE ABOVE BOKQ nOlw 222 * IGALW,\ WO;\!EN ••• 290 * I'-ANS ,:V ITH IVORY A~D RUBBER 1 AX AKKA DWARF OF COKCO FRA;\yAIS 3 9 2 A::\'COLA BLACKS::-'IITH S 3 4 1 *IX .:.. FAX VILLACE • 33 *AX UPPER OGOWE VILLAGE *SATEKE PORTE RS, OGOWE • *ADOO )fA S, UPPER OGOWE *AKO~GAS, TH F. CHIEF GONJOXE, A:;\D HI S '1'''0 wn·ES . *::-'IOUNT lOPJ<:, OGOWE: 370 * ..\ GIA:;\TESS OF THE UPPER OGO\d:. *VI'PER OGOWE NATIVES *) IAK ING A C HAR ~I 1:."1 THE UPPE R OGOWE Rl~GJOX VIEW ON T HE )fll)l)LF. VOLTA *LADY OF OH,nIBO, OGowIt, SI--lOW I NG C ICATR lSATIO~ . 530 PEAK OF CA;'IIEROO~S FRO) I T H E XORTH-WEST BRINGI>iG I ~ RUBBER-CO~GO LOO::-'I AT EQUETTA. (By permission of Alexander Cowen, Esq.) 135 TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA INTRODUCTION Relateth the various causes which impelled the author to embark upon the voyage. IT ,vas in 1893 that, for the first time in my life, I found myself in possession of five or six months which were not heavily forestalled, and feeling like a boy with a new half- crown, I lay about in my mind, as Mr. Bunyan would say, as to what to do with them. "Go and learn your tropics," said Science. \;Vhere on earth am I to go, I wondered, for tropics are tropics wherever found, so I got down an atlas and saw that either South America or " lest Africa must be my destination, for the Malayan region was too far off and t·oo expensive. Then [ got vVallace's Geograpltica! Distribu- tion and after reading that master's article on the Ethiopian region I hardened my heart and closed with vVest Africa. I did this the more readily because while I knew nothing of the practical condition of it, I knew a good deal both by tradition and report of South East America, am\ remembered that Yellow Jack was endemic, and that a certain naturalist, my superior physically and mentally, had come very near getting starved to death in the depressing society of an expedition slowly 'perishing of want and miscellaneous fevers up the Parana. My ignorance regarding \;Vest Africa was soon removed. And although the vast cavity in my mind that it occupied B I NTRODUCTION is not even yet half filled up, there is a great deal of very curious information in its place. I use the word curious advisedly, for I think many seemed to translate my request for practical hints and advice into an advertisement that "Rubbish may be shot here." This same information is in a state of great confusion still, although I have made heroic efforts to codify it. I find, however, that it can almost all be got in under the following different headings, namely and to wit:- The dangers of \;V est Africa. The disagreeables of 'vV est Africa. The diseases of'Ne st Africa. The things you must take to \~-est Africa. The things you find most hand y in \;Vest Africa. The worst possible th ings you can do in 'vVest Africa. I inquired of all my friends as a beginning what they knew of \Nest A frica. The majority knew nothing. A percentage said, "Oh, you can't possibly go there; that's where Sierra Leone is, the white man's grave, you know." 1 f these were pressed furth er, one occasionally found that they had had relations who had gone out there after having been" sad trial s," but, on consideration of their having left not only West Africa, but this world, were now forgi,'en and for- gotten. One lady however kindly remembered a case of a gentleman who had resided some few years at Fernando Po, but when he retu rned an aged wreck of forty he shook so violently with ague as to dislodge a chandelier, thereby destroying a valuable tea-service and fl attening the silver teapot in its midst. No; there was no doubt about it, the place was not healthy, and although I had not been "a sad trial," yet neither had the chandelier-dislodging Fernando Po gentle- man. So I next turned my attention to cross-examining the doctors. "Deadliest spot on earth," they said cheerfully, and showed me maps of the geographical distribution of disease. Now I do not say that a country looks inviting when it is coloured in Scheele's green or a bilious yellow, but MISSIONARIES AND TRADE RS 3 these colours may ari se from lack of a rtistic g ift in the cartographer. There is no mistaking what he means by black, however, and black yeu'll find they colour West A frica from above Sierra Leone to below the Congo. " I wouldn 't go there if I were you," sa id my med ical friends, " you'll catch something; but if you must go, and you're as obstinate as a mule, just bring me--" and then followed a li st of commis- sions from here to New York, anyone of which--but I only found that out afterwards. All my informants referred me to the miss ionaries. " There were," they said, in an a iry lI"ay, " lots of them down there, and had been for years." So to missionary literature I addressed myself with great ardour; alas! only to find that these good people wrote their reports not to tell you how the country they resided in was, but how it was getting on towards being what it ought to be, and how necessary it was that their readers should subscribe more freely, and not get any fooli shness into thei r heads about obtaining an inadequate supply of souls for their money. I also found fearful con- firmation of my medical friends' statements about its unhealthiness, and various details of the distribution of cotton shirts over which I did not linger. From the missionaries it was, however, that I got my first idea about the social condition of West Africa. I gathered that there existed there, firstly the native human beings-the raw material, as it were-and that these were led eithe r to good or bad respectively by the miss ionary and the trader. There were also the Government representatives, whose ch ief business it was to strengthen and consol idate the miss ionary's work, a function they carried on but indifferently wel l. But as for those traders ! we ll, I put them down under the dangers of \;Vest Africa at once. Subsequen tly I came across the good old coast yarn of how, when a trader from that region went thence, it goes without saying where, the Fallen A nge l without a moment's hesitation vacated the infernal throne (Milton) in his favour. This, I beg to note, is the marine form of the legend. vVhen it occurs terrestrially the trader becomes a Liverpool mate. But of course no one need believe it either way-it is not a miss ionary's story. B 2 ["'TRaDUCTION Naturally, while my higher intelligence was taken up wi th attending to these statements, my mind got set on going, and I had to go. Fortunately I could number, among my acquaintances one individual who had lived on the Coast for seven years. Not, it is true, on that part of it which I was bound for. Still his advice was pre-eminently worth attention, because, in spite of his long residence in the deadliest spot of the region, he was still in fair going order. I told him I intended going to'vVest Africa, and he said, "When you have made up your mind to go to \Nest Africa the ,·ery best tfling you can do is to get it unmade again and go to Scotland instead ; but if you r intelligence is not strong enough to do so, abstain from exposing yoursel f to the direct rays of the sun, take 4 grains of quinine every day for a fort- night before you reach the Rivers, and get some introductions to the 'vVesleyans; they are the only people on the Coast who have got a hearse with feathers,J1 My attention was next turned to getting ready things to take with me. Ha,·ing opened upon myself the sluice gates of advice, I rapidly became distracted. My friends and their fri ends alike seemed to labour under the delusion that I intended to charter a steamer and was a person of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. The only thing to do in this state of affairs was to gratefully listen and let th ings drift. They showered on me various preparations of quinine and other so-called medical comforts, mustard leaves, a patent filter, a hot-water bottle, and last bu t not least a large square bottle purporting to be malt and cod-liver oil, which, rebelling against an African temperature, arose in its wrath, ejected its cork, and proclaimed itself an efficient but not too sa,·ourr glue. Not only do the things you have got to take, but the things you ha,·e got to take them in , present a fine series of problems to the young traveller. Crowds of \\·itnesses testi- fied to the forms of baggage holders they had found invalu- able, and these, it is un necessary to sa)" were all different in form and material. 'vV ith all this eJilbarras de cI/Ol~'I: I \\·as too distrac ted to buy anything new in the way of baggage except a long . waterproof sack neatly closed at the top with a bar and THE VOYAGE OUT handle. I nto this I put blankets, boots, books, in fact any- thing that would not go into my portmanteau or black bag. From the first I was haunted by a conviction that its bottom would come out, but it never did, and in spite of the fact that it had ideas of its own about the arrangement of its contents, it sen'ed me well throughout my voyage. I t was the beginning of August '93 when I first left England for " the Coast" Preparations of quinine with post- age partially paid arrived up to the last moment, and a friend hastily sent two newspaper clippings, one entitled" A We'ek in a Palm-oil Tub," which was supposed to describe the sort of accommodation, companions, and fauna likely to be met with on a steamer going to "Vest Africa, and on which I was to spend seven to Tile Grapilic contributor's one; the oth\"r from The Dail)' Te!egrapll, reviewing a French book of "Phrases in common use" in Dahomey. The opening sentence in the latter was," Help, I am drowning." Then came the inquiry, " If a man is not a thief? " and then another cry, "The boat is upset." "Get up, you lazy scamps," is the next exclamation, followed almost immediately by the question, "\;Vhy has not this man been buried?" " I t is fet ish that has killed him, and he must lie here exposed with nothing on him until only the bones remain," is the cheerful answer. This sounded discouraging to a person whose occupation would necessitate going about considerably in boats, and whose fixed desire ",as to study fetish. So with a feeling of foreboding gloom I left London for Liverpool-none the more cheerful for the matter-of-fact manner in which the steamboat agents had informed me that they did not issue return tickets by the West African lines of steamers. I will not go into the details of that voyage here, much as I am given to discursiveness. They are more amusing than instructive, for on my first voyage out I did not know the Coast, and the Coast did not know me, and we mutually terrified each other. I fully expected to get killed by the local nobility and gentry; they thought I was connected with the "Vorld 's "Vomen's Temperance Association, and collecting shocking detail s for subsequent magic-lantern lectures on the liquor traffic; so fearful misunderstandings 6 I NTRODUCTIO N arose, but we gradua lly educated each other, a nd I had the best of the affair; for all I had got to teach them was that I was only a beetle and feti sh hunter, and so forth , while they had to teach me a new world, and a very fascinating course of study I found it. And whatever the Coast may have to say against me-for my continual desire for hair-pins, and other pins, my intolerable habit of getting into water, the abomina- tions full of ants, that I brought into their houses, or things emitting at unexpectedly short notice vivid and awful stenches - they cannot but say that I was a diligent pupil, who honestly tried to learn the lessons they taught me so kindly, though some of those lessons were hard to a person who f1ad never previously been even in a tame bit of tropics, and whose life for many yea rs had been an enti rely domestic one in a Un iversi ty town. One by one I took myoid ideas derived from books a nd thoughts based on imp'erfect knowledge and weighed them aga inst the real life arou nd me, and found them either worth- less or wanting. The greatest reca.ntation I had to make I made humbly before I had been th ree months on the Coast in 1893. It was of my idea of the traders, WhatIhadexpected to find them was a very different th ing to what I did find t hem; and of their kindness to me I can never sufficiently speak, for on that voyage I lI'as utterly out of touch with the governmental circles, and utterly dependent on the traders, and the most useful lesson of all the lessons I learnt on the \Nest Coast in 1893 was that I could trust them, Had I not learn t this very thoroughly I could never ha\'e gone out again and carried out the voyage I g ive yo u a sketch of in this book. T hanks to " the Agent," I have visited places I could never o therwise have seen; and to the respect and affection in which he is held by the native, lowe it that I have done so in safety, \Vhen I have arrived off his factory in a steamer or canoe, unexpected, un introduced, or turned up equally unheralded o ut of the bush in a dilapidated sta te, he has always receil'ed me with that gracious hospitality which must ha\'e gil'en him, under Coast cond itions, very real trouble and incol1l'enience- things he could have so readi ly found logical excuses against entailing upon himsel f Jar the sake o f an indil' idual \I'hom he OBLIGATIONS AC KNOWLEDGED had never seen before-whom he most likely 1I"0uld never see again-and whom it was no earthly profit to him to see then. H e has bestowed himself-7\lIah only kno\l's where-on his small trading vessels so tha t I might have hi s one cabin. H e has fi shed me out of sea and fresh wa ter with boat-hooks; he has continually given me good ad vice, which if I had only followed would ha\'e enabled me to keep out of water and any other sort of affliction; and although he holds the meanest opinion of my intellect for going to such a place as West Africa for beetles, fi shes and feti sh, he has given me the greatest assistance in my work. The value of that work I pray you withhold judgment on, until I lay it before you in some ten volumes or so mostly in L atin. All I know that is true regarding 'Nest A frican facts, I owe to the traders; the errors are my own. To Dr. Gunther, of the British Museum, I am deeply g ra teful for the kindness and interest he has always shown regarding all the specimens of natural history that I have been able to lay before him ; the majority of which must have had very old tales to tell hi m. Yet his courtesy and a tten- tion gave me the thing a worker in any work most wants- the sense that the work was worth doing-and sent me back to work again wi th the knowledge that if these things in- terested a man like him, it was a more than sufficient reason for me to go on collecting them. T o Mr. W. H. F. Kirby I am much indebted for hi s wo rking out my small collection of certain Orders of insects ; and to Mr. Thomas S. Forshaw, for the great help he has afforded me in revising my notes. It is impossible for me even to catalogue my debts of grati - tude still outstanding to the West Coast. Chiefl y am I indebted to Mr. C. G. Hudson, whose kindness and influence enabled me to go up the Ogowe and to see as much of Congo Fran~ai s as I have seen, and his efforts to take care of me were most ably seconded by Mr. Fildes. The French officials in " Congo Fran~ais" never hindered me, and always treated me with the greatest kindness. You may say there was no reason why they should not, for there is nothing in this fi ne colony of France that they need be ashamed of anyone seeing; but I find it is customary for tra\'ellers to say the French offici als I NTRO DUCTIO N throw obstacles in the way of anyone visiting their posses- sions, so I merely beg to state this was decidedly not my experience; although my deplorable ignorance of French prevented me from explaining my humble in tentions to them. The Rev. Dr. Nassau and Mr. R. E. Dennett have enabled me, by placing at my disposal the rich funds of their know- ledge of native life and idea, to amplify any deductions from my own observation. Mr. Dennett's work I have not dealt with in thi s wo rk because it refers to tribes I was not amongst on thi s journey, but t6 a tribe I made the acquaintance with in my '93 voyage-the Fjort. Dr. Nassau's observations I have referred to. Herr von Lucke, V ice-governor of Cameroon, I am indebted to for not only a llowing me, but for assisting me by every means in his power, to go up Cameroons Peak, and to the Governor of Cameroon, Herr von Puttkamer, for his constant help and kindness . Indeed so great has been the willingness to help me of a ll these gentlemen, that it is a wonder to me, when I think of it, that their e fforts did not project me ri ght across the continent and out at Zanziba r. That this brilliant affair did not come off is owing to my own lack of enterprise; for I did not \I'ant to go across the continent, and I do not hanker after Zanzibar, belt onl y to go puddlin g abou t obscure districts in \Vest A fri ca a fter raw fetish a~d fresh-water fi shes. lowe my ability to have profited by the k indness 0f these gen tlemen on land, to a gentleman of the sea-Captain Murray. He was capta in of the vessel I went out on in 1'893, and he saw then that my mind was full of errors that must be eradicated if I was go ing to deal with the Coast success- fully; and so he eradicated those errors and replaced them with sound knowledge from his own stores collected during an acquaintance with the \~l est Coast of ol'er thirty years. The education he has g iven me has been of the greatest value to me, and I sincerely hope to make many more voyages under hi m, for I well know he has still much 0 teach and I to learn . Last, but not least, I must chronicle my debts to the ladies. First to those two courteous Portuguese ladies, Donna An na de Sousa Couti nho e Chichorro and her sister Donna Maria OTHER BENEFACTORS 9 de Sousa Coutinho, who did so much for me in Kacongo in 1893, and have remained, I am proud to say, my firm friends ever since. Lady MacDonald ana Miss Mary Slessor I speak of in this book, but only faintly sketch the pleasure and help they have afforded me; nor have I fully expressed my gratitude for the kindness of Madame Jacot of Lembarene, or Madame Forget of Talagouga. Then there are a whole list of nuns belonging to the Roman Catholic Missions on the South- West Coast, ever cheery and charming companions; and Frau Plehn, whom it was ever a pleasure to see in Cameroons, and di scourse with once again on things that seemed so far off then-art, science, and literature ; and Mrs. H. Duggan, of Cameroons too, who used, \vhenever I came into that port to rescue me from fearful states of starvation for toilet necessaries, and lend a sympathetic and intelligent ear to the "awful sufferings" I had gone through, until Cameroons became to me a thing to look forward to. When in the Canaries in 1892, I used to smile,. I regretfully own, at the conversation of a gentleman from the Gold Coast who was up there recruiting after a bad fever. His conversa- tion consisted largely of anecdotes of friends of his, and nine times in ten he used to say, "He's dead now." Alas! my own conversation may be smiled at now for the same cause. Manyof my friends mentioned even in·this very recent 'account of the Coast" are dead now." Most of those I learnt to know in 1893 ; chief among these is myoid friend Captain Boler, of Bonny, from whom I first learnt a certain power of com- prehending the African and his form of thought. I have great reason to be grateful to the A fricans them- selves-to cultured men and women among them like Charles Owoo, Mbo, Sanga Glass, Jane Harrington and her sister at Gaboon, and to the bush natives; but of my experience with them I give further details, so I need not dwell on them here. I apologise to the general reader for giving so much detail on matters that really only affect myself, and I know that the indebtedness which all African travellers have to the white residents in Africa is a matter usually very lightly touched on. No doubt my voyage would seem a grander thing if I omitted mention of the help I received , but-well , there was 10 I NTRODUCTIO N a German gentleman once who evolved a camel out of his inner consciousness. It was a wonderful thing ; still, you know, it was not a good camel, only a thing which people personally unacquainted with camels could bel ieve in. Now r am ambitious to make a picture, if r make one at all, that people who do know the original can believe in-even if they criticise its po ints-and so r give yo u details a more showy artist would omit. CHAPTER I LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE Setting forth how the voyager departs from England in a stout vessel and in good company, and reaches in due course the Island of the Grand Canary, and then the Port of Sierra Leone : to which is added some account of this latter place and the comeliness of its women. THE West Coast of Africa is like the Arctic regions in one particular, and that is that when you have once visited it you want to go back there again ; and, now I come to think of it, there is another particular in which it is like them, and that is that the chances you have of returning from it at all are small, for it is a Belle Dame sans meni. I know that from many who know t he Coast, there will be a chorus of d issent from the first part of my sentence, and a chorus of assent to the second. But if you were to take many of the men who most energetically assert that they wish they were home in England," and see if they would ever come to the etc., etc., place again," and if you were to bring them home, and let them stay there a little whi le, I am pretty sure that-in the absence of attractions other than those of merely being home in England, notwithstanding its glorious joys of omnibuses, underground railways, and evening newspapers-these same men, in terms varying with individual cases, will be found sneaking back apologetically to the Coast. I succum bed to the char.m of the Coast as soon as I left Sierra L eone on my first voyage .out, and I saw more than enough du ring that voyage to make me recognise that there was any amount of work for me worth doing down there. So I warned the Coast I was coming back again and the Coast did not believe me; and on my return to it a second time 12 LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE CHAP. displayed a genuine surprise, and formed an even higher opinion of my folly than it had formed on our first acquaint- ance, which is saying a good deal. During this voyage in 1893, I had been to Old Calabar, and its Governor S ir Claude MacDonald, had heard me expatiating on th~ absorbing interest of the Antarctic drift, and the importance of the collection of fresh-water fi shes and so on. So when Lady MacDonald heroically decided to go out to him in Calabar, they most kindly asked me if I ,,·ould join her, and make my time fit hers for starting on my second journey. This I most wi llingly did, but I fear that \·ery sweet and gracious lady suffered a great deal of apprehension at the prospect of spending a month on board ship wi th a person so devoted to science as to go down the \ 1,1 est Coast in its pursuit. During the earlier days of our voyage she would attract my attention to all sorts of marine objects overboard, so as to amuse me. I used to look at them, and think it would be the death of me if I had to work like this, explaining meanwhile aloud that" they were very interest ing, but Haeckel had done them, and I was out after fresh-water fishes from a river north of the Congo this time," fearing all the wh il e that she felt me unenthusiastic for not flyIng over into the ocean to secure the specimens. However, my scientific qualities, whatever they may amount to, did not blind thi s lady long to the fact of my being after all a very ordinary individual, and she told me so- not in these crude words, indeed, but nicely and kfndly- whereupon, in a burst of gratitude to her for understanding me, I appointed myself her honorary a ide-de-camp on the spot, and her sincere admirer I shall remain for ever, fully recognising that her courage in going to the Coast was far greater than my own, for she had more to lose had fe\·er claimed her, and she was in those days by no means under the spell of Africa. But this is anticipating. It was on the 23rd of December, 1894, that we left Li\·er- pool in the Batallga, commanded by myoid friefld Captain Murray, under whose care I had made my first voyage. We ought to have left on the nnd, but this we could not do, for it came on to blow a bit, such a considerable bit TE~ERIFFE A~D GRA?\D C,-\:\ARY '3 indeed. that eyen the mighty Cunard liner LUCaJllll could not leaye the ~Iersey; moreoyer the Batallga could not ha\'e left e\'en if she had wanted-ro. for the dock gates that shut her in could not be opened. so fierce \I'as the gale, So it was -unday the 23rd then, as I ha\'e said, that we got off, \I'ith no further misad\'enture saye that, o\l'ing to the \I'eather, the Bat,mlrtZ could not take her pOl\'der on board, a loss that nearly broke the carpenter's heart, as it robbed him of the pleasure of making that terrific bang \I'ith \I,hich a \\' est Coaster salutes her ports of calL On the 30th we sighted the Peak of Teneriffe early in the afternoon, It displayed itself, as usual, as an entirely celestial phenomenon, A. great many people miss seeing it. Suffering under the delusion that El Pica is a terrestrial affair, they look in yain some\l'here about the le\,el of their own eyes, which are stri\ing to penetrate the dense masses of mist that usually enshroud its slopes by day, and then a friend comes along, and gaily points out to the ne\ycomer the glittering \yhite triangle somewhere near the zenith, On some days the Peak stands out clear from ocean to summit, looking e\'ery inch and more of its 12,080 ft,; and this is said by the • Canary fishermen to be a certain sign of rain, or fine \I'eather, or a gale of wind; but whene\'er and hO\l'e\'er it may be seen. soft and dream-like in the sunshine, or melodramatic and bizarre in the moonlight. it is one of the most beautiful things the eye of man may see, Soon after sighting T eneriffe, Lanzarote showed, and then the Grand Canary, Teneriffe is perhaps the most beautiful, but it is hard to judge between it and Grand Canary as seen from the sea, The superb cone this afternoon stood out a deep purple a"o-ainst a serpent-green sky, separated from the brilliant blue ocean by a girdle of pink and gold cumulus, lI'bile Grand Canary and Lanzarote looked as if they were formed from fantastic-shaped sunset cloud-banks that by some spell had been solidified, The general colour of the moun- tains of Grand Canary, \I,hich rise peak after peak until they culminate in the Pica de las ::\ie\'es, some 6,000 feet high, is a \'ellowish red and the air which lies among their rocky ~re\'ices and 'swathes their softer sides is a 100'ely lustrous LIVERPOOL TO S IERRA LEO NE CHAP. blue. used to fancy that if I could only have collected some of it in a bottle, and taken it home to show my fr iends, it would have come out as a fair blue-violet cloud in the g ray ai r of Cam bridge. Just before the sudden dark came down, and when the sun was taking a curve out of the hori zon of sea, all the clouds gathered round the three is lands, leaving the sky a pure amethyst pink, and as a good-nig ht to them the sun outlined them with rims of shining gold, and made the snow-clad Peak of T eneriffe bl aze with star-white li ght. In a few minutes came the dusk, and as we neared Grand Canary, out of its cloud-bank gleamed the red fl as h of the lighthouse on t he I s leta, and in a few more minutes, a long the sea level, sparkled the five miles o f irregularly distribu ted lights of ]'uerto de la Luz and the city of Las Pa lmas. I wi ll not here go into the subject of the Canary I slands, because it is one upon which I foresee a li abi li ty to become diffuse. I have visited them now five times; four times mere ly calling there on my way up and down to the Coast, but on the other occasion spending many weeks on them; and if I once sea rt on the subject of their beauties, the ir trade, and their industries, why, who knows to what size this volume Inay not grow? We reached S ierra Leone at 9 A.M. on the 7th of J anuary, and as the place is hardly so much in touch with the general public as the Canari es a re J I may perhaps venture to go more into detail s rega rding it. The harbour is formed l1y the long low str ip of land to the north ca ll ed the Bullam shore, and to the south by the penin sul a terminating in Cape S ierra Leone, a sandy promontory at the end of which is situated a lighthouse of irregular habits. Low hill s covered with tropical forest g rowth rise from the sandy shores of the Cape, and along its face arc three creeks or bays, deep inlets showi ng I Sierra Leone has been known si nce the voyage of ] lanna of Carthage in the sixth century B.C.) but it has not go t into general literature to :1Oy grc:1t eXlent since Pliny. The only later classic who has noticed it is i\4i lton, who in il vcry sui table portion of l'aradis~' Los/ says of Notus and Afer, H black with thunderous clouds [rom Sierra Lona." Our occupa~ tion of it cl:1tcs from 1787. FREE TOWN through their narrow entrances smooth beaches of yellow sand, fenced inland by the forest of cotton-wood~ and palms, with here and there an elepl~antine baobab. The first of these bays is called Pirate Bay, the next English Bay, and the third Kru Bay. The wooded hills of the Cape rise after passing Kru Bay, and become spurs of the mountain, 2,500 feet in height, which is the Sierra Leone itself. There are, however, several mountains here besides the Sierra Leone, the most conspicuous of them being the p~ak known as Sugar Loaf, and when seen fr.om the sea they are very lovely, for their form is noble, and a ,,-ealth of tropical vegetation covers them, which, unbroken in its con- tinuity, but endless in its vafiety, seems to sweep over their sides down to the shore like a sea, breaking here and there into a surf of flowers_ . It is the general opinion, indeed, of those who ought to know that Sierra Leone appears at its best when seen from the sea, particularly when you are leaving the harbour homeward bound; and that here its charms, artistic, moral, and residential, end. But, from the experience I have gained of it, I ha\-e no hesitation in saying that it is one of the best places for getting luncheon in that I have ever happened on, and that a more pleasant and varied way of spending an afternoon than going about its capital, Free Town, with a certain Iri sh purser, who is as well known as he is respected among the leviathan old negro ladies, it would be hard to find. Still,it must be admitted it is rather hot. Free Town is situated on the northern base of the mountain, and extends along the sea-front with most business-like wharves, quays, and warehouses. Viewed from the harbour, "The Liverpool of West A frica," 1 as it is called, 10Qks as if it were built of gray stone, which it is not. When you get ashore, you will find that most of the stores and houses-the majority of which, it may be remarked, are in a state of acute dilapida- tion- are of painted weod, with corrugated iron roofs. Here and there, though, you will see a thatched house, its thatch 1 Lagos also likes to bear this flattering appellation, and has now-a- days more right to the title. 16 LIVERPOOL TO S IERRA LEO NE CHAP. covered with creeping plants, and inhabited by colonies of creeping in sec ts. Some of the stores and churches are, it is t rue, built of stone, but thi s does not look like stone at a di stance, being red in co lour-unhcwn blocks of the red stone of the locality . In the crannies of these buildings tra iling plants covered with pretty mau ve or yellow Rowers take root, and every- where, along the tops of the wall s, and ill the crac ks of the houses, a re ferns and Rowering plants. They must get a good deal of their nouri shment from the rich, thick air, which seems composed of 85 per cen t. of warm water, and the remainder of the odours of Frangipani, orange Rowers, mag noli as, oleanders, and roses, combined with others tha t de monstrate that the inhabi tan ts do not regard sanita ry matte rs with the smallest degree of interest. There is one central street, and the others are neatl y planned out at ri ght angles to it. None of them are in any way paved or meta ll ed. They a re covered in much prettie r fashion, and in a way more sui table for naked feet, by green Bahama grass, save and except those which are so nearly perpendicular tha t they have go t every bit of earth and grass clea red o ff them down to the red bed-rock, by the hea\'y rain of the wet season. T he shops, which frin ge these streets in an uneven line, are like rooms with one side taken out, for shop-fronts, ~s we ca ll them, a re here un know n. The ir Roors are generally raised on a bed of stone a li tt le a bo\'e street leve l, but except when newly laid, t hese stones do not show, for the grass gro\>vs over them , making th em into green banks. Inside, the shops are lined ' with she lves, on which a re placed bund les of gay-co loured Manchester cottons and shawls, Swiss clocks, and rough bu t vivid ly coloured chin a; or-what makes a brave show-brass, copper, and iron cook ing-pots. H ere and there you come across a baker's, with trays of banana fritters of te mpting odour ; and there is no lac k of barbers and chemists. \ '\l ithi n a ll the shops are usua lly to be seen tbe prop rietor and hi s fa mi ly with a few fri ends, a ll exceedingly plu mp and happ)" hav ing a socia l shout together a chat I cannot ca ll it. THE NATIVES '7 There is usually a counter across the middle, over which customers and casual callers alike love to loll. Some brutal tradesmen, notably chemist-s, who presumably regard this as unprofessional, affix tremendous nails, with their points out- wards, to the fronts of their counter tops, in order to keep their visitors at a respectful distance. In every direction natives are walking at a brisk pace, their naked feet making no sound on the springy turf of the streets, carrying on their heads huge burdens which are usually crowned by the hat of the bearer, a large limpet- shaped affair made of palm leaves. vVhile some carry these enormous bundles, others bear logs or planks of wood, blocks of building stone, vessels containing palm-oil, baskets of vegetables, or tin tea-trays on which are folded shawls. As the great majority of the native inhabitants of Sierra Leone pay no attention whatever to where they are going, either in this world or the next, the confusion and noise are out of all proportion to the size of the town ; and when , as. frequently happens, a section of actively perambulating- burden-bearers charge recklessly into a sedenta ry section, the· members of which have d ismounted their loads and squatted themselves down beside them, ri ght in the middle of the fair ' way, to have a friendly yell with some acquaintances, the row becomes terrific. In among these crowds of country people walk stately Mohammedans, Mandingoes, Akers, and Fulahs of the Arabised tribes of the \;Vestern Soudan. These are lithe,. well-made men, and walk with a peculiarly fine, elastic carriage. Their graceful garb consists of a long white loose- sleeved shirt, over which they wear either a long black mohair or silk gown, or a deep bright blue affair, not altogether unlike a University gown, only with more stuff in it and more folds. They are undoubtedly the gentlemen of the Sierra Leone native population, and they are becoming an increasing faction in the town, by no means to the pleasure of the Christians. For, although Bishop I ngram admits that they are always ready to side with the missionaries against the drink traffic, here their co-operation ceases, and he complains that they exercise a great influence over tbe native C 18 LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE CHAP. Christian flock. He says, "vVe are disposed to believe that the words of their Koran are only a fetish and a charm to the rank and file of their adherents, and that g reat supersti- tion prevails among them, and is propagated by them," I but how the Bishop can see a diffenmce in thi s matter between the use of the Koran and the Bible by the neg ro of Sierra Leone, it is diffi cu lt to understand; and judged by the criterion of every-day conduct, the Mohammedan is in nine cases in ten , the best man in vVest Africa. But he is, I grieve to say, not thoroughly orthodox. The Koran I have seen many of them using consists merely of extracts and prayers written in Maghribi characters; and I have g rave doubts whether they could read this any better than I could without a dictionary. I have also frequently seen them playing warry, and another game, the name whereof I know not, bu t it is played with li ttle sticks of wood stuck in the ground, and "something on the rub," or what corresponds to it; although they must be aware that, by thi s indulgence in the pleasures of gambling, they will undoubtedly incur the penalty of having donkeys graze upon their g raves-yea, e\'en on the graves of their parents. They should thin k of this, for warry, when all 's said and done, is a desperately dull game. They are, moreover, by no means strict teetotallers, and some individuals from Accra, whom I once met, shocked me deeply by saying Mohammedans were divided int~ two classes, Marabuts who do not drink, and Sonniki who do. I do not know where they can ha\'e picked up this idea ; but I observed my acquaintances were "hard-shelled" Sonniki. Again, the S ierra L eone and Lagos Mohammedans regard wo rking in leather and iron as q uite respectable occupations, which is not in accordance with \'iews held in high Mohammedan circles. Very good leather-work they cer- ta inly turn out-bags, sheaths for daggers, and such like, to say nothing of the quaint hats, made of the most brilliant yellow, blue, and red leather st ri ps plaited together: very hea,-:y, and very ug ly, but useful. Quite" rational dress" hats in fact, for their broad brims hang down and shade the lIeck, and they a lso shelter the eyes to such an extent that 1 Sierra LeOJle after a Hundred Years. TALISMANS 19 the wearer can't see without bending up the front brim pretty frequently ;-but then I notice there always is something wrong with a rational article of dress. Then the bulbous dome top keeps off the sun from the head, rain runs off the whole affai r easi ly, and bush does not catch in it. If I had sufficient streng th of mind I would wear one myself, but even if I decorated it with cat-tails, or antelope ha ir, as is u, ually done, I do not feel 1 could face Piccadilly in one; and yot! ha\'e no right to go about A frica in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home. The leather-work that meets with the severest criticism from the Christian party is the talisman or g ri-g ri bags, and it must be admitted that an immense number of them are sold. I have, however, opened at hazard some eighty-seven of these, and a lways found in them that which can do no man harm, be he black, white, or yellow, to wear o\'er hi s heart ; namely, the beautiful I 13th Sura of the Koran , the" Sura of the Day-break," which says :-" I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the Day-break, that H e may deliver me from the evil of those things which H e has created; from t he evi l of the night when it cometh on; and from the e\' il of blowers upon knots, and from the evil of the envious when he envieth." This is written on a piece of paper, rolled orJolded up tightly, a nd enclosed in a leathern case which is suspended round the neck. T he talismans the Mohammedans make do not, how- ever, amount to a tenth part of those worn, the number whereof is enormous. I have never seen a negro in national <:ostume without some, both round hi s neck, and round his leg, just under the knee '; and I dare say if the subject were gone into, and the clothes taken off the more fully-draped coloured gentlemen, you would hardly find one without an amulet of some kind. The great majority of these other <:harms are supplied by the ju-ju priests, or some enter- prising heathen who has a Suhman, or private devil, of hi s own. But to the casual visitor at Sierra Leone the Mohammedan is a mere passing sensation, You neither feel a burning desire to laugh with, or at him, as in the case of the country folks, nor do you wish to punch his head, and split his coat C 2 20 LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE CHAP. up his back-things you yearn to do to that perfect flower of Sierra Leone culture, who yells your bald name across the street at you, condescendingly informs you that you can go and get letters that are wai ting for you, while he smokes his cigar and lolls in the shade, or in some similar way displays his second-hand rubbishy white culture-a culture far lower and less dignified than that of either the· stately Mandingo or the bush chief. I do not think that the Sierra Leone dandy really means half as much insolence as he shows; but the truth is he feels too insecure of his own real position, in spi te of all the" side " he puts on, and so he dare not be courteous like the Mandingo or the bush Fan. It is the costume of the people in Free Town and its harbour that will first attract the attention of the new-comer, notwith- standing the fact that the noise, the smel l, and the heat are simultaneously making desperate bids for that favour. The ordinary man in the street wears anything he may have been able to acquire, anyhow, and he does not fasten it on securely. I fancy it must be capillary attraction, or some other par- ti ally-understood force, that takes part in the matter. It is certainly neither braces nor buttons. There are, of course, some articles which from their very structure are fairly secure, such as an umbrella with the st ick and ribs removed, or a sh irt. This last-mentioned treasure, which usually becomes the property of the ordinary man from a female r~latiye or admirer taking in white men's washing, is always worn flow- ing free, and has such a charm in itself that the happy pos- sessor cares little what he continues his costume with- trousers, loin cloth, red flannel petticoat, or rice-bag drawers, being, as he would put it, "all same for one" to him. I remember one day, when in the outskirts of the town, seeing some country people coming in to market. It was during the wet season, and when they hove in sight, they were, so to speak, under bare poles, having tiothing on worth mentioning. But each carried a bundle done up in American cloth, with a closed umbrella tucked into it. They pulled up as soon as they thought it dangerous to proceed further, for fear of meeting some of their town friends, and solemnly dressed, holding umbrellas over each other the while. Then, dignified THE LADIES 21 and decorated, and each sporting his gingham, they marched into the town. H ere and there in the street you come across a black man done up in a tll-eed suit, or in a black coat and tal1 hat ; and here and there a soldier of the ' Nest India regiment, smart and tidy-looking in his Zouave costume. These sol- diers are said to be the cause of the many barbers' shops sprinkled about the town, as they are not a l10wed razors of their own, owing to their tendency to employ them too frequently in argument. The ladies are di vided into three classes; the young g irl you address as H tee-tee;" the young person as "seester ; " the more mature charmer as " mammy ; " but I do not adv ise you to employ these terms when you are on your first visit, because you might get misunderstood. For, you see, by addressing a mammy as seester, she might think either that you were unconsc ious of her dignity as a married lady-a matter she would soon put yo u right on-or that you were flirting, which of course was totally foreign to you r intention, and would make you uncomfortable. My advice is that you rigidly stick to missus or mammy. I have seen this done most successfull y. The ladies are almost as varied in their costume as the gentlemen, but .always neater and cleaner; ·and mighty picturesque they are too, and occasionaJly very pretty. A market-woman with her joJly brown face and laughing brown eyes-eyes aJl the softer for a touch of antimony-her ample form clothed in a lively print overal1, made with a yoke at the shoulders, and a fuJI long flounce which is gathered on to the yoke under the arms and faJl s fuJl y to the feet; with her head done up in a yeJlow or red handkerchief, and her snowy white teeth gleaming through her vast sm iles, is a mighty pleasant thing to see, and to talk to. But, A l1ah! the circumference of them! Tt>e stone-built, whitewashed market buildings of Free To~n have a creditably clean and tidy appearance con- sidering the climate, and the quantity and variety of things exposed for sale-things one wants the pen of a Rabelais to catalogue. Here are al1 manner of fruits, some which are familiar to you in England; others that soon become so to you 22 LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE CHAP. in Africa. You take them as a matter of course if you are ·outward bound, but on your call homeward (if you make it) you will look on them as a blessing and a curiosity. For lower down, particularly in "the Rivers," these things are rarely to be had, and never in such perfection as here; and to see again lettuces, yellow oranges, and tomatoes bigger than marbles is a sensation and a joy. Onions also there are, and if you are wise you will buy them when outward bound. If you are speculative in the bargain you will take as many as you can get, for here you may buy them from four to five shillings the box, and you can sell them below for any sum between twelve shillings and a sovereign. Here, too, are beads, but for the most part of dull colour and cheap quality. Beans, too, are more than weIl represented. Horse-eye beans, used for play ing warry; vast , pantomime- s ized beans, the insides of which being removed , and a few shot put in, make a pleasant ra ttle to hang at the wri st; and evil Calabar beans, which can serve no good end at all here, and which it seems insolent to sell in open m arket, in a town where poisoning is said to be so prevalent that its own Bishop declares" smaIl social gatherings a re a lmost unknown from the fear of it." 1 The piles of capsicums and chiIlies, the li ttle heaps of Reckitt's Blue, v ivid-coloured Berlin wools, pumpkins, pine- a pples, and aIligator pears, g ive rich and briIliant t9uches of colour, and reli eve the more sombre tones of kola nuts, old iron , antelo pe horns, monkey skins, porcupine quiIls, and snails. These snails are a prominent feature in the market in a quiet way : they are used beaten up to help to make the sauce for palm oil chop ; and they are shot a li ve on to the fl oo r in heaps, and a re acti ve and nomadic: "'hereby it faIl s out that people who buy other things such as vegetables, Berli n wool, or meat, a re li able to find one of these massive gastropods mixed up in the a ffa ir. T reading on one of them is, for a nen'ous person, as al arming as the ca tastrophe of treading on one of the native black babies with which the market fl oor a bounds. There are half a hundred other indescribabilia, and abO\'e a ll hovers the peculia r Sierra L eone smell and the peculiar Sierra Leone noise. 1 Sierra Leol/e a/It.'r a HIIJldn.:d J· I.·an', JACK CROWS 23 One of the chief features of Free Town are the jack crows. Some wr iters say they are peculiar to Sierra Leone, others that they are not, but botl"k--unite in calling them Picatllartes !DllIl1locepllalus. To the white people who live in daily contact ' with them they are turkey-buzzards; to the natives, Y ubu. Anyhow they a re evil -looking fowl, and no ornament to the roof-ridges they choose to sit on. The native Christians ought to put a row of spikes along the top of their cathedral to keep them off; the beauty of that edifice is very far from great, and it cannot carry off the effect produced by the row of these noisome birds as they sit a long its summit, with their wings arranged at all manner of different angles in an " a ll gone" way. O·ne bird perhaps will have one straight out in front, and the other casually disposed at right-angles, another both straight out in fron t, and others again with both hanging hopelessly down, but none with them neatly and tidily folded up, as decent birds' wings should be. They all give the im- p ression of having been ex tremely drunk the previous evening, and of having subsequently fallen into some sticky ·abomina- tion-into blood for choice. Being the scavengers of Free Town, however, they are respected by the local authorities and preserved; and the natives tell me you never see either a young or a dead one. The latter is a thing you would not expect, for half of them look as if they could not Ji ve through the afternoon. They also told me that when you got close to them, they had a « 'trong, 'trong 'niff; 'ni ff too much." I did not try, but I am quite willing to believe this statement. The other animals most in evidence in the streets are, first and foremost , goats and sheep. I have to lump them together, for it is exceedingly difficult to tell one from the other. A ll along the Coast the empirical rule is that sheep carry their tails down, and goats carry their tails up; fortunately you need not worry much anyway, for they both" taste rather like thS' nothing that the world was made of," as Frau Buch- holtz-§'ays, and own in addition a fibrous texture, and a cer- tain twang. Small cinnamon-coloured cattle are to be got here, but horses there are practically none. Now and again some one who does not see why a horse should not live here as well as at Accra or Lagos imports one, but it always 24 LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE CHAP. shortly dies. Some say it is because the natives who get their living by hammock-carrying poison them, others say the tsetse fly fini shes them off; and others, and these I believe are right, say that entozoa are the cause. Small, lean, lank, yellow dogs with very erect ears lead an awful existence, afflicted by many things, but beyond all others by the goats, who, rearing their families in the grassy streets choose to think the dogs intend attacking them. Last, but not least, there is the pig-a rich source of practice to the local lawyer. The lawyer in Sierra Leone flourishes like the green bay- tree. All the Vlest Coast natives, when the fear of the dangers of their own country-fashion law is off them, and they are under European institutions-I ,"er;- nearly said control, but that wou ld have been going too far-become exceedingly litigious, more litigious naturally in Sierra Leone because they have more European institutions there, among others trial by jury. Any law case, whether he wins it or not, is a pleasure to the African, because it gi\'es him an oppor- tunity of showing off his undoubted powers of rhetoric, and generally display ing himself. But there is no lall' case that gives the Sierra Leonean that joy that he gets out of summon- ing a white man, for he can get the white man before a jury of his fellow Sierra Leoneans-what they please to call in that benighted place a jury of his peers-and bully and insult hi m. , There is usually a summons or so awaiting a \~'est Coast boat, and many a proud vessel has dropped anchor in Free T own harbour with one of her officers in a \"entilator and another in a coal bunker. On one vessel by which I was a passenger, it Vlas the second officer who was a wanted." Re- gai ning the ship after a time on shore, we found the deck in an uproar. The centre of affairs was an enormous black lady, bearing a name honoured in English literature, and by pro- fession a laundress, demanding that the body of the second mate in any condition should be rendered over to the hand of the law (represented by four Haussa policemen) on a warrant she held against him for not having discharged his washing-bill last time the steamer was in Sierra Leone. Now this worthy "MY BRUDAH, SAH" man, tired by his morning labour, working cargo in the stew- ing heat, and strong in the virtue of an unblemished life here. had gone to sleep in his cabin, out of which he was routed and confronted with his accusatrix and the small frightened man she' had got with her, whom she kept on introducing as " my brudah, sah." Unfortunately for the lady, it was not the same gallant officer who held the post of second mate, but another, and our injured innocent, joining in the chorus, re- turned thanks for his disturbance in language of singular fluency. He is the only man I have ever met whose powers of expression were equal to his feelings, and it is a merciful providence for him it is so, for what that man feels sometimes I think would burst a rock. The lady and her brother went crestfallen ashore, but the policemen stayed on board until we left, getting exceedingly drunk the while. Looking over the side, I saw one of them fold himself over the gunwale of the boat in which they were going ashore with his head close to the water. His companions heeded not, al1d I insisted on my friend the quartermaster rescuing the sufferer, and arranging him in the bottom of the boat, for not only was he in danger of drowning, but of acting as an all too tempting live-bait for the sharks, which swarm in the harbour. The quartermaster evidently thought thi s was foolish weakness on my part, for it "was only a police- man, and what are policemen but a kind of a sort of a custom house officer, and what are custom house officers but the very deuce? " This, however, was not on the Batallga, but in the days before I was an honorary aide-de-camp, remember. This voyage out on the Batallga not even Sierra Leone could find anything to summon us for. CHAPTER II THE GOLD COAST \¥herein some description of Cape Coast and Ac;:cra is g iven, to which are added divers observations on supplies to be obtained there. CAPE COAST CASTLE and then Accra were the next places of general interest at which we stopped . The former looks well from the roadstead, and as if it had very recently been white- washed. It is surrounded by low, heav ily-forested hill s, which rise almost from the seashore, and the fine mass of its old castle does not di splay its dilapidation at a distance. More- over, the three stone forts of V ictori a, Vlilliam, and Macarthy, situated on separate hill s commanding the town, add to the general . appearance of permanent substantialness so different from the usual ramshackledom of West Coast settlements. Even when you go ashore and have had time to recover your senses, scattered by the surf experience, you find this substantialness a true one, not a mere \'isual delusion produced by painted wood as the seeming sub- stan tia lness of Sierra Leone turns out to be when you get to close quarters with it. It causes one some mental effort to grasp the fact that Cape Coast has been in European hands for centu ries, but it requires a most un- modern power of credence to realise this of any other settle- ment on the whole western seaboard until you have the pleasure of seeing the beautiful city of San. Paul de L oand a, far away down south, past the Congo. My experience of Cape Coast on this occasion was one of the hottest , but one of the pleasantest I have ever been through on the Gold Coast. The fo rmer attribute \I"as due CH.ll V1EW FROM FORT W1LLlAM 27 to the climate, the latter to my kind fri ends, Mr. Batty, and Mr. and Mrs. Dennis K emp. I was taken round the grand stone-built houses with their- high stone-walled yards and sculpture-decorated gateways, built by the merchants of the last century and of the century before, and through the great rambling stone castle with its water-tanks cu t in the solid rock beneath it, and its commodious accommodation for slaves awaiting shipment, now almost as obsolete as the guns it mounts, but not quite so, for these cool and roomy chambers serve to house the native constabulary and their extensive families. This being done, I was taken up an un mitigated hill , on whose summit stands Fort Vlilliam, a pepper-pot-like structure now used as a lighthouse. Our peregrinations having been carried on under a fancy temperature, I was inclined to drink ' in the beauty of this building from a position at its base, and was looking round for a shady spot to sit down in, when my intentions were ruthlessly frustrated by my companions, who would stop at nothing short of its summit, where I eventually found myself. The view was exceed ingly lovely and ex- tensive. Beneath, and between us and the sea, lay the town in the blaz ing sun. In among its solid stone build- ings patches of native mud-built huts huddled together as though they had been shaken down out of a sack into the town to serve as dunnage. Then came the snow-white surf wall , and across it the blue sea with our steamer rolling to and fro on the long, regular swell, impatiently waiting until Sunday should be over and she could ,york cargo. Round us on a ll the other sides were wooded hills and valleys, and away in the distance to the west showed the white town and castle of Elmina and the nine-mile road th ither, skirt ing the surf-bound seashore, only broken on its level way by the mouth of the Sweet River. Over all was the brooding silence of the noonday heat, broken only by the dulled thunder of the surf. After seeing these things we started down stairs, and on reaching ground descended yet lower in to a sort of stone- walled dry moat, out of which opened clean, cool, cellar-l ike chambers tunnelled into the earth. These, I was informed, 28 THE GOLD COAST CHAP. had also been constructed to keep slaves in when they were the staple export of the Gold Coast. They were so refresh- ingly cool that I lingered looking at them and their massive doors, ere being marched up to ground level again, and down the hill through some singularly awful stenches, mostly arising from rubber, into the big Wesleyan church in the middle of the town. I t is a building in ~he terrible Africo-Gothic styJe, but it compares most favourably with the cathedral at Sierra Leone, particularly internally, wherein, indeed, it far surpasses that structure. And then we returned to the Mission House and spent a very pleasant evening, save for the knowledge (which amounted in me to remorse) that, had it not been for m y edification, not one of my friends would have spent the day toiling about the town they know only too wel l. Mr. Dennis Kemp was chairman and superinten- den t of the \i\I esleyan Mission on the Gold Coast when I was last there, and he had filled thi s important position for some time. This is the "largest and most influential Protestant miss ion on the West Coast of Africa, and it is now, I am g lad to say, adding a technical department to its scholastic and religious one. The Basel Mission has done a great deal of good work in giving technical instru(;tion to the natives, and practically started this most important branch of their education. There is still an almost infinite amount of this work to be done, the A frican being so strangely deficient in mechanical culture; infinitely more so, indeed, in this than in any other particular. All the other Protestant miss ions are fo llowing the Basel Mission's lead, and, recog- ni sing that a good dea l of their failure arises from a want of this practical side in their instruction, are now starting tech- nical schools :-the Church of England in Sierra Leone, the \ i\I esleyans on the Gold Coast, and the Presbyterians in Calabar. In some of these technical schools the sort of instruction g iven is, to my way of thinking, ill-advised ; arts of no immediate or g reat use in the presen t culture-condition of W est A frica-such as printing, book-binding, and tailoring- being taught. But this is not the case under the vVesleyans, who a lso teach smith 's work, carpentering, bricklaying, waggon- Il MISSIONS building, &c. Alas! none of the mlssions save the Roman Catholic teach the thlng that It lS most important the nati ves should learn, in the face oLthe condltions that European government of the Coast has induced, namely, improved methods of agriculture, and plantation work. The \Vesleyan Mission has only four white ministers here. Native ministers there are seventeen, and the rest of the staff is entirely native, consisting of 70 Catechists, 144 day school teachers, 386 Sunday-school teachers, and 405 local preachers. The total number of full y accredited members of this sect in 1893 was stated in the Gold Coast Annual to be 7,066. The total amount of money raised by this mission on the Gold Coast in 1893 was £5,338 145. 9d. This is a very remarkable sum and most cred itable to the nati ve members of the sect, for almost all the other native Christian bodies are content to be in a state of pauperised dependency on British subscriptions. The headquarters of the Wesleyan Mission were, up to last year, at Cape Coast, but now they have been removed to A buri on the hills some twenty-six miles behind Accra, and Cape Coast is no longer the head- quarters of any governmental or religious affair. The Goverr.ment removed to Accra from Cape Coast several years ago, on account of the great unhealthiness of the latter place and in the hope that Accra wou ld prove less fatal. Unfortunately thi s hope has not been realised; moreover the landing at Accra is worse than at Cape Coast, and the supply of fresh water very poor. Accra is one of the fi ve West Coast towns that look we ll from the sea. The others don't look well from anywhere. First in order of beauty comes San. Paul de Loanda; then Cape Coast with its satellite Elmina, then Gaboon, then Accra with its satellite Christiansborg, and lastly, S ierra L eone. \Vhat there is of beauty in Accra is oriental in type. Seen from the sea, Fort St. J ames on the left and Chri sti ansborg Castle on the right, both almost on shore le\'el, give, with an outcrop of sandy dwarf cliffs, a certain air of balance and strength to the town, though but for these and the two old castles, Accra wou ld be but a poor place and a fli msy, for the 30 THE GOLD COAST CHAP. rest of it is a mass of rubbishy mud and palm-leaf huts, and corrugated-iron d,,·ellings for the Europeans. Corrugated iron is my abomination. I quite understand it has points, and I do not attack from an ;;esthetic standpoint. It really looks well enough when it is painted white. There is, close to Christiansborg Castle, a patch of bungalows and offices for officialdom and wife that from a d istance in the hard bright sunshine looks like an encampment of snow-white tents od made black man, but dem debil make Portuguee," and he also remembers an unfortunate affair that occurred some years ago now, in connection \\'ith coffee-growing. A number of Krumen engaged themselves for a two years' term of labour on the Island of San Thome, and when they an'i\·'ed there, were set to work on coffee plantations by the Portuguese. Now agricultural \·\,ork is '( wOlnan's palaver," but ne\'ertheless the Krumen made shift to get through with it, \'owing the \\'hile no doubt, as they hopefully notched away the moons on their tally-sticks, that they wou ld never let the girls at home know that they had been hoeing. But when their moons were all complete, instead of being sent home' with their pay to "we country," they ,,'ere put off from t ime to time; and month after month went by and they were still on San Thome, and still hoeing. At last the home-sick men, in despair of e\'er getting free, started off secretly in ones and t,,'os to try and get to "we country" across hundreds of miles of the storm-haunted Atlantic in small canoes, and with next to no provisions. The resu lt was a tragedy, but it might easily have been worse; for a few, a very (ew, were picked up alive by English vessels and taken back to their beloved "we country " to tell the tal e. But many a canoe was fOlind wit\;) a dead Kruboy or so in it; and many a one which, floatin g bottom up,,'ards, graphically spoke of ·madness caused by hunger, thi rst, and despai r ha\'ing driven its occupants over- board to the sharks. My Portuguese friends assure me that there "'as never a thought of permanently detaining the boys, and that they were only just keeping them until other labourers arri ved to take their place on the plantations. I quite believe them, for I ha\'e seen too much of the Portuguese in Africa to bel ieve that they would, in a wholesale way, be cruel to natives. But I am not in the least su rpri sed that the poor Krumen took the Portuguese logo and amaJi/ui for eternity itself, fo r I have frequently done so. The greatest length of the island lies N.E. and S. \~l , and E 50 FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBrs CHAP. amounts to thirty-three miles; the mean breadth is seventeen miles. The port, Clarence Cove, now called Santa Isabel by the Spaniards-who have been giving Spanish names to all the English-named places without anyone tak ing much notice of them-is a very remarkable place, and except perhaps Gaboon the finest harbour on the West Coast. T he point· that brings Gaboon, anchorage up in line with Clarence Cove is its superior healthiness; for Clarence is a section of a circle, and its shores are steep rocky cliffs from 100 to 200 feet h igh, and the place, to put it very mild ly, exceedingly hot and stuffy. The cove is evidently a partly submerged crater, the submerged rim of the crater is almost a perfect semi-circle seawards-having on it 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10 fathom s of water save almost in the centre of the arc where there is a passage with 12 to 14 fathoms. Inside, in the crater, there is deeper water, running in places from 30 to 45 fathom s, and outside the submerged rim there is deeper water again, but rocky shoals abou nd. On the top of the shore cliffs stands the dilapidated little town of Clarence, on a plateau that fall s away slightly towards the mountain for about a mile, when the ground com- mences to rise into the slopes of the Cordillera. On the narrow beach, tucked close against the cliffs, are a few stores belonging to the merchants, where goods are placed on land- ing, and there is a little pier too, but as it is u~ually having something done to its head, or else is closed by the authorities because they intend doing something by and by, the chances are against its being available for use. Hence it usually comes about that yo u have to land on the beach, and when you have done thi s you make you r way up a very steep path, cut in the cliff-side, to the town. \Mhen you get there you find your- self in the very dullest town I know on the Coast. I remember when I first landed in Clarence I found its society in a flutter o f expectation and alarm not untinged with horror. Clarence, nay, the whole of Fernando Po, was about to become so rackety and diss ipated as to put Paris and Monte Carlo to the blush. Clarence was going to have a cafe; and what was going to go on in that cafe I shrink from reciting. I have little hesitation now in saying this alarm was a false one. \Mhen T next a rri ved in Clarence it was just as sound JIl "GO AND SEE THE COALS" 5' asleep and its streets as weed-grown as ever, although the cafe lI'as open. My idea is the sleepiness of the place infected the cafe and took all the go out of it. But again it may have been that the inhabitants were too well guarded against its evi l influence, for there are on the island fifty-tlVo white lay- men, and fifty-four priests to take charge of them'-the extra tll'O being, I presume, to look after the Governor 's conduct, although this worthy man made a most sp irited protest against this view when I suggested it to him; and in add ition to the priests there are several missionaries of the Method ist Inission, and also a white gent leman who has invented a new religion. Anyhow, the cafe smoulders like a damp squib. \N"hen you spend the day on shore and when, having ex-· hausted the charms of the town,-a thing that usually takes from between ten minutes to a quarter of an hour,-you apply to an inhabitant for advice as to the dis posal of the rest of your shore leave, you are told to "go and see the coals." You say you have not come to tropical islands to see a coal heap, arid applying elsewhere for ad vice yo u probably get the same. So, as you were told to " go and see the coals" when you left your ship, you do as you are bid. These coals, the remnant of the store that was kept here for the Engl ish men-of-war, were left here when the naval station was removed. The Spaniards at first thought of using them, and ran a tram-way from Clarence to them. But when the tram- ,,·ay was fini shed, their activity had run out too, and to this day there the coals remain. Now and again some one has the idea that they are quite good, and can be used for a steamer, and some people who have tried them say they are all ri ght, and others say they are a ll wrong. And so the end of it wi'l l be that some few thousand years hence there will be a serious' quarrel among geologists on the strange pocket of coal on Fernando Po, and they wi ll run up continents, and ra ise and lower oceans to explain them, and they will doubtless get 1 I am informed that the allowance made to these priests exceeds by some pounds the revenues Spain obtains from the Island. In Spanish possessions alone is a supporting allowance made to missionaries, though in all the other colonies they obtain a government grant. E 2 FERNANDO PO AND THE;. BUBIS CHAP. more excitement and pleasure out of them than you can nowadays. r am by no means a person who hungers for amusement- far from it; but when r had been to see the coals I certainly felt as if I could cram another excitement into that afternoon without any great effort, and I cite this experience as a warning to others of the dangers of being unsatisfied; for although I did discover a far superior and more thrilling thing, high up among the beautiful, blossoming shrubs that make a narrow fringe between the sea and the forest, namely, a large man-o'-war's pinnace,. I could not find out how she got there, or why she stayed there. Flushed, however, ,,·ith this discovery I must needs go on, still along the southern shore, with the g rand , densely-forested mountains rising on my left, and the lovely Atlantic on my right,-now and then climbing over rocks, and then paddling across the bar of a tiny ri ver (Munguba) wh ich came creeping out from among the trees, smelling certainly unpleasant, but a joy to the eye. Then I struck a farm, where operations connected with preparing cocoa were proceeding, and the genial nati,"es disco.ursed with me on the subject for a short time. Going on further I came to another farm, and had more discourse, and a lot of information about Liberia from a native of that country, and then on across other small ril·ers, the Burapulopu and the Bulabopi, up to a swampy forest, when I turned back at last well sati sfied with my afternoon. Just as r passed my first farm [ found that what I had regarded as a dry land shrub-belt was nothing of the kind. The tide had come in and taken full possession of it, running up to the forest wall. The forest was far too thick to get through, so there was nothing for it but a hurried waist-high wade. I "·ent in for this remembering that I had been informed that there were very nasty crocodiles on the island, and that I had got to get past the mouth of that largest river-as crocodiley- looking a spot as you could wish for, if you had a gun. r saw none however, and so presume there are none there, for it is the habit of these animals, when they are handy to the sea, to lounge down and meet the in-coming tide. The worst part of the affair was getting round the projecting bits of III ENG LI SH OCCUP.-\TION 53 rocky cliff where the sea was break ing; not roughly, or I should not be writing this now. The hi story of the Engttsh occupation of Fernando Po seems often misunderstood, and now and then one hears ou r GO\'ernment reviled for handing it over to the Spaniards. But this was unavoidable, fo r we had it as a loan from Spain in 1827 as a naval station for our sh ips, at that time energeti - cally commencing to suppress the slave trade in the Bights; the idea being that this island would afford a more hea lthy and conven ient spot for a naval depot than any port on the coast itself. More convenient Fernando Po certainly was, but not more healthy, and ever s ince 1827 it has been accumulating for itself an evil repu tation for unhealthiness which is onl y Ian; guish ing just at present because there is an interval between its ep idemics-fever in F e rnando Po, even more than on the mainland , having period ic outbursts of a more serious type than the normal intermittent and remittent of the Coast. :vl oreover, Fernando Po shares with Senegal the undoubted yet doubtful honour of having had regular yellow fe ver. In 1862 and 1866 this disease was imported by a ship that had come from Havana. S ince then it has not appeared in the definite South A meri can form, and therefore does not seem to have obtained the foothold it has in Senegal, where a few years ago all the money voted for the keeping of the Ftte iVatiouale was in one district devoted by publ ic consent to the purchase of coffins, required by an overwhelming outbreak of Yellow J ack. In 1858 the Spanish Government th in king, presumably, that the slave trade was suppressed enough, or at any rate to a suffi cien tly inconvenient extent, re-cla imed Fernando Po, to the horror of the Baptist missionaries who had settled in Clarence apparently under the erroneous idea that the island had been definitely taken over by the English. This mission had received from the \~Iest African Company a large grant ·of land, and had collected round it a gathering of Sierra Leonians and other artisan and trading Afri cans who were attracted to Clarence by the work made by the naval station ; and these people, with the English traders who a lso settled 54 FERNANDO PO AND THE BUB IS CHAP. here for a like reason, were the founders of Clarence Town. The declaration of the Spanish Government stating that only Roman Catholic miss ions would be countenanced caused the Baptists to abandon their possessions and withdraw to the mainland in A mbas Bay, where they ha"e since remained, and nowadays Protestantism is represented by a Methodist Miss ion wl1i ch has a sub-branch on the mainland on the Akwayafe Ri,-er and one on the Qua lbo. The Span iards, on resuming possession of the island, had one of their attacks of activity regarding it, and sent out with Don Carlos Chacon, who was to take over the command, four J esuit priests, a secretary, a commissariat officer, a custom-house clerk, and a transport, the Santa Maria, \\'ith a number of emigrant families. This attempt to colonise Fernando Po should ha,-e at least done the good of p reventing such experiments e,'er being tried again ,,-ith women and ch ildren, for of these unfortunate creatures-for whom, in spite of its being the ,,'et season, no houses had been p rovided-more than 20 per cent. died in the space of fi"e months. Mr. Hutchinson, who was English Consul at the time, tells us that " In a ,-ery short time gaunt figures of men, women, and children might be seen crawling through the streets, with scarcely an evidence of life in their faces, sa ,'e the express ion of a sort of torpid carelessness as to how soon it might be their turn to drop off and die. The Portii/o, a steamer, ca rried back fifty of them to Cadiz, \\'ho looked when they embarked more like li,-ing skeletons of skin and bone than animated human beings." 1 I quote this not to cast reproach on the Span ish Gm-ernment, but merely to g ive a fac t, a case in point, of the deadly failure of endeavours to coloni se on the \~res t Coast, a thing which is even no,,- occasionally attempted, always with the same sad results, though in most cases these attempts are no\\' made by religious and misinformed people under Bishop Tarlot-'s mission. The Spania rds d id not entirely confine their attention to planting co lonists in a ready-made state on the island. As soon as they had settled themseh-es and built thei.- barracks 1 Ten J?ears' J Vallderillgs am o1lg tlU! Rt/li(lpialls , T. J. Hutchinson. III SPANISH OCCUPATION 55 ---~-- ~-----------~ and GO\-ernment House, they set to work and cleared away the bush for an area of from four to six miles round the tom1_ The ground soon became overgrown again, but this clearing is still perceptible in the different type of forest on it, and has enabled the gardens and little plantations round Clarence to be made more easily_ My Spanish friends assure me that the Portuguese, who discovered the island in '471 ,' and who exchanged it and Anno Bom in '778 to the Spaniards for the little island of Catalina and the GOVERNOR'S I'ALACEJ FERKA KDO po. colony of Sacramento in South America, did not do any- thing to de,-elop it_ When they, the Spaniards, first entered into possession they at once set to work to colonise and clear. Then the colonisation scheme went to the bad, the nati,-es poisoned the wells, it is said, and the attention of the Spaniards was in those days turned, for some inscrutable reason, to the eastern shores of the island-a district now quite abandoned by whites, on account of its unhealthiness 1 There is difference of opinion among authorities as to whether Fernando Po was discO\-ered by Fernando Po or by Lopez Con · sahes. FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS CHAP. -and they lost in addition to the colonists a terrible quantity of their sailors, in Concepcion Bayl A lull then followed, and the Spaniards willingly lent the place to the English as aforesaid. They say we did nothing except establish Clarence as a headquarters, which they consider to have been a most excellen t enterprise, and import the Baptist Miss ion , which they hold as a less estimable undertaking; but there! that's nothing to what the Baptist Mission hold regarding the Spania rds. For my own part, I wish the Spaniards better luck this time in their activity, for in direct- ing it to plantations they are on a truer and safer road to wealth than they have been with th~ir previous importations of Cuban political prisoners and ready-made families of colon ists, and I hope they will send home those un- fort unate wretches they have there now, and commence, in their expected two years; to reap the profits of the coffee and cocoa. Certainly the chances a re that they may, for the soil of Fernando Po is of exceeding fertility; Mr. Hutchinson says he has known Indian corn planted here on a Monday evening make its appearance four inches above ground on the following 'vVednesday morning, \\'ithin a period, he carefully says, of thirty-six hours. I ha\'e seen th is sort of thing over in Victoria, but I like to get a grown strong man, and a Consul of H er Britannic Majesty, to say it for me. Having discoursed at large on the various incomers to Fernando Po we may next turn to the natives, properly so-called, the Bubis. These people, a lthough presenting a seri es of interesting problems to the ethnologist, both from their insular position, and their differentiation from any of the mainl and peoples, a re st ill but little known. T o a great extent this has arisen from their exclusiveness, and their total lack of enthusiasm in trade matters, a thing that differentiates them more than any other characteristic from the mainlanders, who, young and old, men and women, regard trade as the great affair of life, take to it as soon as they can toddle, and don't even leave it off at death, according to their own accounts of 1 From .I.\pril 1777 till the end of 1781, 370 men out of the 547 died of fever. III CLOTHES AND NO CLOTHES 57 the way the spirits of distinguished traders still dabble and interfere in market matters. But it is otherwise with the Bubi. A little rum, a few beads, ana finish-then he will turn the rest of his attention to catching porcupines, or the beautiful little gazelles, gray on the back and white· underneath, with which the island abounds. And what time he may have on hand after this, he spends in building houses and making him- self hats. It is only his utterly spare moments that he employs in making just sufficient palm oil from the rich supply of nuts at his command to get that rum and ~hose beads of his. Cloth he does not want; he utterly fails to see what good the stuff is, for he abhors clothes, and as a fr iend of mine observed :-" Senora, you'll see more bare skin on this island than in a regiment of grenadiers." He said this in Spanish, . and I had to look it up in a dictionary and then think about it afterwards, so the statement irritated me, for I felt that the man knew enough English to be aware that it must work out as a bad pun. But nevertheless the truth was in it, for when you go outside Clarence you come across the Bubi osten- tatiously unclothed-I say ostentatiously for the benefit of ethnologists-and this I have never elsewhere seen in "Vest Africa. The Spanish authorities insist that the natives who come into the town should have something on, and so they array themselves in a bit of cotton cloth, which before they are out of sight of the town on their homeward way, they strip off and stuff into their baskets, showing in this, as well as in all other particulars, how uninfluencible by white culture they are. For the Spaniards, like the Portuguese, are great sticklers for clothes, and insist on their natives wearing them-usually with only too much success. I shall never forget the yards and yards of cotton the ladies of Loanda wore; and not content with making cocoons of their bodies, they wore over their heads, as a mantilla, some dozen yards or so of black cloth into the bargain. Moreover this insistence on drapery for the figure is not merely for towns ; a German officer tolc! me the other day that when, a week or so before, his ship hac! called at Anno Bom, they were simply besieged for" clo', clo', clo' ;" the Anno Bomians explaining that they were all anxious to go across to Principe anc! get employment on coffee planta- 58 FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS CHAP. tions, but that the Portuguese planters would not engage them in an unclothed state" You must not, howe,"er, imagine that the Bubi is neglectful of his personal appearance" In his way he is quite a dandy" But hi s idea of decoration goes in the direction of a plaster of " tola " pomatum m"er his body, and abm"e all a hat. This hat may be an antique European one, or a bound-round handker- chief, but it is more frequently a confection of nati,"e manu- facture, and great taste and ,"ariety is di splayed in its make" They an~ of plaited palm leaf~that's all you can safely generalise regarding them~for sometimes they ha,"e broad brims, sometimes narrow, sometimes no brims at all. So, too, with the crown" Sometimes it is thick and domed, sometimes non-existent, the wearer's hair aglow with red-tail parrots' feathers sticking up where the crown should be" As a general rule these ha ts are much adorned \\"ith oddments of birds' plumes, and one chief I kne\\" had quite a Regent-street Dolly Varden creation which he used to affix to his 11"001 in a most inte lligent lI"ay with bonnet-p ins made of lI"ood" These hats are also a peculiarity of the Bubi , for none of the main- landers care a ro\\' of pins for hats, except " for dandy," to wear occasiona ll y, whereas the Bubi lI"ears hi s perpetually, a lthough he has by no means the same amount of sun to guard against o\\-ing to the glorious forests of his island. a m told there is a certain sound reason in his de,"otion for hi s ha t, and that is that it acts as a protection against a beautiful but poisonous green tree snake that abounds on F ernando Po, whose ha bit it is to hang, ups ide down, from the trees" If the snake strikes the hat instead of the head when the wearer is out hunting, why so much the better for tbe lI"earer. F or earrings the Bubi lI"ears pieces of wood stuck through the lobe of the ear, and although this is not a decorative habit still it is less undecorati,"e than that of certain mainland friends of mine in this region, \\·ho wear large and necessarily dripping lum ps of fat in their ears and in their hair. His neck is hung round with jujus on strings~bits of the back- bones of py thons, teeth, feathers, and antelope horns-and round his upper a rm are bracelets, preferably made of ivory III ORNAMENTS AND COINAGE 59 got from the mainland, for celluloid bracelets carefully imported for his benefit he refuses to look at. Often also these brace- lets are made of beads, or a -ci1-clet of leaves, and when on the war-path an armlet of twisted grass is always worn by the men_ Men and ,yomen alike \\"ear armlets, and in the case of the ,,-omen they seem to be put on ,,-hen young, for you see puffs of flesh gro,,-ing out from between them. They are also not entirely for decoration, serving commonly as pockets, for under them in the case of men is stuck a knife, and in the case of women a tobacco pipe, a well-coloured clay. Leglets of similar construction are worn just under the knee on the right leg, while around the body you see belts of tsltibbu, small pieces cut from Achatectonia shells, which form the nati,-e currency of the island. These shells are also made into veils worn by the ,,-omen at their wedding. This native coinage-equi\"alent is very interesting, for sllch things are exceedingly rare in \;Vest Africa. The onfyother instance I personally know of a tribe in this part of the \\"orld using a nati,-e-made coin is that of the Fans, \\"ho use little bundles of imitation axe-heads. Dr. Oscar Baumann, \\"ho kno,,'s mar" than anyone else about these Bubis, thinks, I belie"e, that these bits of Achatectonia shell s may ha,-e been introduced by the runaway Angola slaves in the old days, who used to fly from their Portuguese owners on San Thome to the Spaniards on Fernando Po. The villages of the Bubis are in the forest in the interior of the island, and they are fairly ~\'ide apart. They-are not a sea-beach folk, although each village has its beach, which merely means the place to which it brings its trade, these beaches being usually the dwelling places of the so-called Portos,' negroes, who act as middle-men between the Bubis and the whites. You will often be told that the Bubis are singu larly bad house-builders, indeed that they make no definite houses at 1 Porto is the Bubi name for black men who are not Bubis, these were in o1d days Portuguese slaves, "Porto /J being evidentl y a corruption of "Portuguese," but it is used alike by the Bubi to designate Sierra Leonian Accras, in fact, all the outer barbarian blacks. The name for white men, Mandara, used by the Bubis, has a sort of resemblance to the Effik name for whites, Makara, i.e., the rul ing one, but I do not know whether these two words have any connect ion. 60 FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS CHAP. all, but only rough shelters of branches. This is, however, a mistake. Shelters of this kind that you come across are merely the rough huts put up by hunters, not true houses. The village is usually fairly well built, and surrounded with a living hedge of stakes. The houses inside thi s are four-corIlered, the walls made of logs of wood stuck in edgeways, and surmounted by a roof of thatch pitched at an extremely stiff angle, and the whole is usually su rrounded with a dug-out drain to carry off surface water. These houses, as usual on the 'IN est Coast, are divis ible into tlVO classes-houses of assembly, and private living houses. The first are much the larger. The latter are very low, and sometimes ridiculously small, but still they are houses and better than those awful Loango grass affai rs you get on the Congo. Herr Baumann says that the houses high up on the mountain have double walls between which there is a free space; an arrangement which may serve to minimise the extreme draughtiness of an ordinary Bubi house-a very necessary thing in these relati vely chilly upper regions. I may remark on my own account that the Bubi villages do not often lie right on the path, but, like those you have to deal with up the Calabar, some little way off it. This is no doubt for the purpose of -concealing their whereabouts from strangers, and it does it suc- cessfully too, for many a merry hour have I spent dodging up and down a path trying to make out at what particular point' it was advisable to dive into the forest thicket to reach a village. But this cultivates habits of observation, and a short course of this work makes you recognise which tree is which along miles of a bush path as easi ly as you would shops in your own street at home. The main interest of the Bubi's life lies in hunting, for he is more of a sportsman than the majority of mainlanders. He has not any big game to deal with, unless ,\"e except pythons-which attain a great size on the island-and croco- diles. Elephants, though plentifu.l on the adjacent mainland, are quite absent from Fernando Po, as are also hippos and the great anthropoid apes; but of the little gazelles, small monkeys, porcupines, and squirrels he has a large supply, and in the rivers a very pretty otter (Llltra joensis) with yellow III TRAPS VERSUS GUNS 61 brown fur often quite go lden underneath ; a creature "'hich is, I belie\'e, identical lI'ith the A ngola otter. The Bubis use in their hUnting flint-lock guns, but chiefly traps and nets, and, I am told, slings. The advantage of these latter methods are, I expect, the same as on the mainland, \,-here a distinguished sportsman once told me : "You go shoot thing with gu n. Berrah well-but you no get him thing for su re. No sah. Dem gun make nize. Berrah well. You fren hear dem ni ze and come .look him, and you hab to go share what you done kill. Or bad man hear him ni ze, and he come look him, and you no fit to get share-you fit to get kill y ussel f. Chii! chii! traps be best." I urged that the traps might also be robbed. "No, sah," says he," them bian (charm) he look after them traps, he fit to make man who go tief swe ll up and bust." The B ubis also fish, mostly by basket traps, but they are not experts either in thi s or in canoe management. Their chief sea-shore sport is hunting for the eggs of the turt les lI'ho lay in the sand from August to October. These eggs-about 200 in each nest-are about the size of a billiard-ball, with a leathery elwelope, and a re much \'alued for food, as are also the grubs of certain beetles got from the stems of the palm- trees, and the honey of the wild bees which abo und here. Their domestic animals are the usual A fri can list; cats, dogs, sheep, goats, and poultry. P igs there a re too, very domestic in Clarence and in a wild state in the forest. These pigs are the descendants of those imported by the Spaniards, and not long ago became such an awful nui s- ance in Clarence that the Government issued instructions that all pigs without rings in their noses-i.e. all in a con- dition to grub up back gardens-should be forthwith shot if found abroad. This proclamation was issued by th~ governmental bellman th us :- " I say-I say- I say-I say Suppose pig walk-iron no li ve for him nose ! Gun shoot. Kill him one time. Hear re! hear re ! " However a good many pigs with no iron li ving- in the ir noses got adrift and escaped into the interior, and have flouri shed like the green bay-tree, destroying the Bubi's plantation and eating his yams, while the Bubi retaliating 62 FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS CHAP. kills and eats them. So it's a drawn battle, for the Bubi enjoys the pig and the pig enjoys the yams, which are of singular excellence in this island and celebrated throughout the Bight. Now, I am told, the Government are firmly dis- couraging the export of these yams, which used to be quite a little branch of Fernando Po trade, in the hope that this will induce the native to turn hi s attention to working in the coffee and cacao plantations. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, for the Bubi has shown continually since the 16th century that he takes no interest in these things whatsoever. Now and again a man or woman wi ll come voluntarily and take service in Clarence, submit to clothes, and rapidly pick up the ways of a house or store. A nd just when their owner thinks he owns a treasure, and begins to boast that he has got an exception to all Bubidom, or else that he knows how to manage them better than other men, then a hole in that man's domestic arrangements sudden ly appears. The Bubi has gone, withou t giving a moment's warning, and without stealing his master's property, but just softly and silently vanished away. And if hunted up the treasure will be found iri hi s or her particular village - c1othesless, comfortable, utterly unconcerned, and unaware that he or she has lost anything by leaving Clarence and civilisation. It is thi s conduct that gains for the Bubi the reputation of being a bigger idiot than he rea lly is. For West Africans thei r agriculture is of a fairly high descrip- tion-the noteworthy point about it, however, is the absence of manioc. Manioc is grown on Fernando Po, but onl y by the Portos. The Bubi cu ltivated plants are yams (Dioscorea alata), koko ( Colocasia eSCltlenta)-the taro of the South Seas, and plantains. Their farms are well kept, particularly those in the grass districts by San Carlos Bay. The yams of the Cordillera d istricts are the best flavoured , but those of the east coast the largest. Palm-oil is used for domestic purposes in the usual ways, and palm wine both fresh and fermented is the ord inary natiye drink. Rum is held in high esteelTI, but used in a general way in tnoderation as a cordial and a treat, for the Bubi is, like the rest of the West III THE DRI NK QUESTlON A frican nati ves, by no means an habitual drunka rd. Gin he dislikes l And I may remark you wil-l-find the same opinion in regard to the Dualla in Cameroons ri ver-on the undeniable authority of Dr. Buchner, and my own extensive experiGnce of the \,yest Coast bears it out. Physically the Bubis are a fairly well-formed race of medium height; they are dec ided ly inferior to the Benga or the Krus, but quite on a level with the Effiks The women in- deed are very comely: their colour is bronze and their skin the sk in of the Bantu. Beards are not uncommon among the men, and these g ive their faces possibly more than anyth ing else. a d ifferent look to the faces of the Effiks or the Duallas. I n- deed the people physically most li ke the Bubis that I have . 1 I am glad to find that my own observations on the drink question entirely agree with those of Dr. Oscar Baumann, because he is an un- prejudiced scientific observer, who has had great experience both in the Congo and Cameroon regions before he came to Fernando Po. In the support of my statement I may quote his own words :-" Die Bube trinken namlich sehr gerne Rum; Gin verschmahen sic vollstandig, aber ausser T abak und SaIz gehort Rum zu den gesuchtesten europaischen Artikeln fLir sic. "Vie bekannt hat sich in Europa ein heftiges Geschrei gegen die Verg iftung der Neger durch Alcohol erhoben. "venn das- selbe schon fUr die meisten Stamme vVestafrikas der Berechtigung fast vollstandig entbehrt und in die Categorie verweisen worden muss die man mit dem nieht sehr schonen aber treff"enden Ausdriicke "Human i-- tatsduselei)J bezeichnet, so ist es den Bube gegeniiber wohl mehr als zwecklos. Es mag ja vorkommen dass ein Bube wenn er sei n PaimOi verkauft hat, sich ein oder zweimal im Jahre mit Rum ein H:auschlein antrinkt. Deshalb aber g leich von Alkohol-Vergiftung ZLl sprechen \Yare mindestens Hicherlich. Ich bin i.iberzeugt class mancher jener Herren die in \Vort und Schrift so heftig gegen die Alkolismus der Neger zetern in ihren Studentenjahren allein mehr geistige Getranke genossen haben als zehn Bube wahrend ihres ganzen Lebens. Der Handelsrum welcher \Vie ieh mich ofters iiberzeugt zwar recht verwassert aber keineswegs abstossend schlecht schmeckt, ist den Bube gewohnlich nur eine Delikatesse welche mit Andacht schluckweise genossen wird. \;Venn ein Arbeiter bei uns einen Schluck Branntwein oder ein Glas Bier geniesst um sich zu sHirken, so findet das ] eder in der Ordnung; der Bube jedoch, welcher splitternackt tagelang in feuchten Bergwaldern umher klettern muss, soli beliebe nichts als \ ;Vasser trinken!;) EiJ1c Afn'canische TrojJell . illsei FerJlClndo P(0) Dr. Oscar Baumann, Edward Holzer, \:Vien, 1888. FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS CHAP. e\'er seen, are undoubtedly the Bakwiri of Cameroons Moun- tain, who are also liable to be bearded, or possibly I should say more liable to wear beards, for a good deal of the African hairlessness you hear commented on-in the \;V est African at an)' rate -arise~ from his deliber;ttely pulling his hair out- his beard, moustache, whiskers, and occasionally, as among the Fans, his eyebro\l's, Dr. Baumann, the great authority on the Bubi language says it is a Bantu stock l I kno\\' nothing of it myself sa\'e that it is harsh in sound, Their method of counting is usually by fives but they are notably weak in arithmetical ability, differing in this particular from the mainlanders, and especially from their Negro neighbours, \\'ho are very good at fi gures, surpassing the Bantu in this, as indeed they do in most branches of intellectual acti\'it)', But the most remarkable instance of inferiority the Bubis display is tlleir igno rance regard ing methods of working iron, I do not know that iron in a nati\'e state is found on Fernando Po, but scrap-iron they have been in touch \I'ith for some hun dreds of years, The mainlanders are all cognisant of native methods of working iron, although many tribes of them now dei)end enti rely on European trade for their supply of knives, &c" and this difference between them and the Bubis would seem to indicate that the migration of the latter to the island must ha\'e taken place at a fairl), remote period, a period before the iron-working tribes came dO\l'n to the coast. Of course, if you take the Bubi's usual explanation of his origin, namely that he came out of the crater on the top of Clarence Peak, this argument falls through; but he has also another legend, one moreO\'er which is li kewise to be found upon tbe mainland, which says he \I'as dri\'en from the d istrict north of the Gaboon estuar), by the com ing of the M'pongwe to the coast, and as this legend is the more likely of the tWD I tbink we may accept it as true, or nearly so. But what adds another difficulty to the matter is that the Bubi is not only unlearned in iron lore, but he was learned in stone, and up to the time of the )'outh of many I t( Beitrage zu r Kenntniss der Bubisprache auf Fernando 1'60/: O. Baumann, 2eilsc/lrifl flir ajriJ.:ol1isC/u.: SpraclltNI. Berlin, 1888. JlI SOLVlTUR AM 13ULANDO 65 Porto-negroes on Fernando Po, he was making and using stone implements, and none of the tribes within the memory o f man have done this on the rmrinland. I t is true that up the 'Niger and about Benin and Axim you · get polished stone c,elts, but these are regarded as weird a ffairs,-thunderbolts- and suitable on ly for grinding up and making into medicine. There is no trace in the tradit ions, as far as I have been able to find , of any time at which stone implements were in common u se, and certainly the M'pongwe have not been a very long time on the coast, for their comirig is still remembered in their traditions. The Bubi stone implements I have seen twice, but on neither occasion could I secure one, and although -] have been long promised specimens from Fernando Po, I have not yet received them. They are difficult to procure, . because none of the present towns are on really old sites, the Bubi, like most Bantus, moving pretty frequently, either be- cause the ground is witched, demonstrated by outbreaks of sick- ness, or because another village-full of his fellow creatures, or a horrid ,vhite man plantation-making, has come too close to him. A Roman Catholic priest in Ka Congo once told me a legend he laughed much over, of how a fellow priest had enterprisingly settled himself one night in the middle of a Bubi vi llage with intent to devote the remai nder of his life to quietly but thoroughly converting it. Next morning, when he rose up, he founc;l himself alone, the people having taken all their portable possessions and vanished to build another village elsewhere. The worthy Father spent some time chivy- ing his flock ' about the forest, but in vain, and he returned home disgusted, deciding that the Creator, for some wise purpose, had dedicated the Bubis to the Devil. The spears used by thi s interesting people are even to this day made entirely of wood, and have such a Polynesian look about them that I intend some time or other to bring some home and experiment on that learned Polynesian -culture-ex- pert, Baron von Hugel, with them :-intellectually experiment, not physically, pray understand. The pottery has a very early -man look about it, but in this it does not differ much from that of the mainland , which is quite as poor, and similarly made without a wheel, and sun- F 66 FERNANDO PO AND THE RUBIS CHAP. baked. Those pots of the Bubis I have seen have, however, not had the pattern (any sort of pattern does, and it need not be carefully done) that runs round mainland pots to" keep their souls in "-i.e. to prevent their breaking up on their own account. Their basket-work is of a superior order: the baskets they make to hold the semi-fluid palm oil are excellent, and will hold water like a basin, but I am in doubt whether this art is original, or imported by the Portuguese runaway slaves, for they put me very much in mind of those made by myoId friends the Kabinders, from whom a good many of those s laves were recruited. I think there is little doubt that several of the musical instruments own this origin, particularly their best beloved one, the elibo. This may be described as a wooden bell having inside it for clappers several (usually five) pieces of stick threaded on a bit of wood jammed into the dome of the bell and striking the rim, beyond which the clappers just protrude. These bells are very like those you meet with in Angola, but I have not seen on the island, nor does Dr. Baumann cite having seen, the peculiar double bell of Angola-the engongui. The Bubi bell is made ou t of one piece ·of wood and worked-or played-with both hands. Dr. Baumann says it is customary on bright moonlight nights for two lines of men to sit facing each other and to clap-one can hardly call it ring-these bells vigorously, but in good time, accompanying this performance wi th a monotonous song, while the delighted women and children dance round. The learned doctor evidently sees the picturesqueness of this practice, but notes that the words of the songs are not " tiefsinnige" (pro- found), as he has heard men for hours singing" The shark bites the Bubi's hand," only that over and over again and nothing more. This agrees with my own observations of all Bantu native songs. I have always found that the words of these songs were either the repetition of some such phrase as this, or a set of words referring to the recent adventures or ex- periences of the s inger or the present company's little pecu- liarities; with a very frequent chorus, old and conventional. I shall never forget a white man coming alongside a ship whereon T was once a passenger, quite unconscious that his III MUSIC AND DANCING boatswain was singing as a solo: ., Here \ve bring this wretched creature: he's a very bad man: he does not give us any food, or any money : he goes and gets drunk and--" but I forbear repeating the text of the libel. But after each statement the rest of the crew joined in a chorus which was the native equivalent of-" and so say all of us." The native tunes used with these songs are far superior, and I expect many of them are very old. They are often full of variety and beauty, particularly those of the M'pongwe and Galwa, of which I will speak later. The dances I have no personal knowledge of, but there is othing in Baumann's description to make one think they are distinct in themselves from the mainland dances. I once saw a dance at Fernando Po, but that was among Portos, and it , was myoId friend the Batuco in all its beauty. But there is a d istinct peclIliarity about the places the dances are held on , every village having a kept piece of ground outside it which is the dancing place for the village-the ball-room as it were; and exceedingly picturesque these dances must be, for they are mostly held during the nights of full moon. These kept grounds remind one very much of the similar looking patches of kept grass one sees in villages in Ka Congo, but there is no similarity in their use, for the Ka Congo lawns are of fetish, not frivolous, import. The Bubis have an instrum'ent I have never seen in an identical form on the mainland. It is made like a bow, with a tense string of fibre, One end of the bow is placed against the mouth, and the string is then struck by the right hand with a small round stick, while with the left it is scraped with a piece of shell or a knife-blade. This excruciating instru- ment, I warn anyone who may think of living among the Bubis, is very popular. The drums used are both the Dualla form-all wood-and the ordinary skin-covered drum, and I think if I catalogue fifes made of wood, I shall have nearly finished the Bubi orchestra. I have doubts on this point be- cause I rather question whether I may be' allowed to refer to a very old bullock hide-un mounted-as a musical instrument without bringing down the wrath of musicians on my head, These stiff, dry pelts are much thought of, and played by the F 2 68 FERNANDO PO AND THE BVBrs CHAP. artistes by being shaken as accompaniments to other instru- ments-they make a noise, and that is after all the soul of most African instrumental music. These instruments are all that is left of certain bullocks which many years ago the Spaniards introduced, hoping to impro\'e the food supply. They seemed as if they would have flourished well on the island, on the stretches of grass land in the Cordillera and the East, but the Bubis, being great sportsmen, killed them all off. The festi\'ities of the Bubis-dances, weddings, feasts, &c., -'--at which this miscellaneous collection of instruments are used in concert, usually take place in NO\'ember, the dry season; but the Bubi is liable to pour forth his soul in the bosom of his family at any time of the day or night, from June to J anuary, and when he pours it forth on that bo\\' affair it makes the lonely European long for home. Div isions of time the Bubi can hardly be said to have, but this is a point upon which al l \~Iest Africans are rather "'eak, .particularly the Bantu. He has, hO\ve\'er, a definite name for Novem ber, D ecember, and Janua ry-the dry season months - calling them L obos. The feti sh of these people, although agreeing on broad lines with the Bantu fetish, has many interesting points, as even my small knowledge of it showed me, and it is a subject that wou ld repay further investigation; and as by fetish 1. always mean the governing but underly ing ideas of a man's life, we will commence with the ch ild. Noth ing, as far as I have been .able to make out, happens to him, for feti sh reasons, "'hen he first appears on the scene. He receives at birth; as is usual, a name which is changed fo"r another on his initiation into the secret society, thi s secret society ha\"ing also, as usual) a secret language. A bout the age of tnree or fi\ 'e years the bOlo is decorated, under the auspices of the ,,·itch doctor, with certai n scars on the face. ' These scars run from the root of the nose across the cheeks, and are sometimes carried up in a curve on to the forehead. Tattooing, in the true sense of the word, they do not use, but they paint themselves, as the main- landers do, with a red paint made by burning some herb and mixing the ash with clay or oil, and they occasionally- III SPIRITS AND CHARMS whether for iu-iu reasons or for mere decoration I do not know-paint a band of yellow clay round the chest; but of the Bubi secret society I know little, nor have I been able to find anyone who knows much more. Hutchinson,' in his exceedingly amusing description of a wedding he was once present at among these people, would lead one to think the period of seclusion of the women's society was twelve months. The chief god or spirit, O. \;Vassa, resides in the crater of the highest peak, and by his name the peak is known to the native. Another very important spirit, to whom goats and sheep are offered, is L obe, resident in a crater lake on the northern slope of the Cordilleras, and the grass you sometimes see a Bubi wearing is said to come from this lake and be a iu-iu. of Lobe's. Dr. Baumann says that the lake at Riabba from which the spiri \ Uapa rises is more holy, and that he is small, and resides in a chasm in a rock whose decli vity can only be passed by means of bush ropes, and in the wet season he is not get-at-able at all. He will, if g iven suitable offerings, revea l the future to Bubis, but Bubis only. His priest is the King of all the Bubis, upon whom it is never permitted to a white man, or a Porto, to gaze. Baumann also gives the residence of another important spirit as being the grotto at Banni. This is a sea- cave, only accessible at low water in calm weather. I have heard many legends of this cave, but have never had an opportunity of seeing it, or anyone who has seen it first hand. The charms used by these people are similar in form to those of the mainland Bantu, but the methods of treating paths and gateways are somewhat peculiar. The gateways to the towns are sometimes 'covered by freshly cut banana leaves, and during the religious feast in November, the paths to the villages are barred across with a hedge of grass wh ich no stranger must pass through. The government is a peculiar one for 'Nest Afri ca. Every village has its chief, but the whole tribe obey one great chief or king who lives in the crater-ravine at Riabba. This in- dividual is called Moka, but whether he is now the same man referred to by Rogoszinsky, Mr. Hollatld, and the Rev. Hugh · 1 Tell Years' WGl2dcriugs among tlte EliliopiallS. T. J. Hutchinson. 70 FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS CHAP. . Brown, who attempted to interview him in the seventies, I do not feel sure, for the Bubis are just the sort of people to keep a big king going with a variety of individuals. E,"en the in- defatigable Dr. Baumann failed to see Moka, though he evidently found out a great deal about the methods of his ad- ministration and formed a very high opinion of his ability, for he says that to this one chief the people owe their present unity and orderliness; that before hi s time the whole island was in a state of internecine war: murder was frequent, and property unsafe. N ow their social condition, according to the Doctor's account, is a model to Europe, let alone Africa. Civil wars have been abolished, disputes between vi llages being referred to arbitration, and murder is swiftly and surely punished. If the criminal has bolted into the forest and can- not be found , his village is made responsible, and has to pay a fine in goats, sheep and tobacco to the \"alue of £16. Theft is extremely rare and offences against the moral code also, the Bubis having am extremely high standard in this matter, even the little children having each a separate sleeping hut. In old days adultery was punished by cutting off the offender's hand. I have myself seen women in Fernando Po who have had a ·hand cut off at the wrist, but I believe those were sla\"e women wbo had suffered for theft. Slaves the Bubis do have, but their condition is the mild, poor relation or retainer form of s lavery you find in Calabar, and differs from the Dualla form, for the slaves li ve in the same villages as their masters, while among the Duallas, as among most Bantu slave-holding tribes, the slaves are excluded from the master's ,·illage and ha,"e separate villages of their own. For marriage ceremonies I refer you to Mr. Hutchinson. Burial customs are exceedingly quaint in the southern and eastern districts, \\·here the bodies are buried in the forest with their heads jus t sticking out of the ground. In other districts the boely is also buried in the forest, but is completely cO\"ered and an erection of stones put up to mark the place. Little is known of all West African fetish, still less of that of these strange people. Dr. Oscar Baumann brought to bear on them his careful unemotional German methods of observa- tion, thereby gi,"ing us more valuable information about them 1Il THE PORTOS 7 [ and their island than we otherwise should possess. Mr. Hutchinson resided many years on Fernando Po, in the capacity of H. B. M.'s Constli,"lvith his hands full of the affa irs of the Oil Ri,-ers and in touch with the Portos of Clarence, but he nevertheless made very interesting observations on the natives and their customs_ The Polish exile and his courageous wife who ascended Clarence Peak, Mr. Rogoszinsky, and another Polish exile, 1\1r. Janikowski, about complete our series of authorities on the island. Dr. Baumann thinks they got their information from Porto sources-sources the learned D octor evidently regards as more full of imagination than solid fact, but, as you know, all African travellers are oc- casionaJly in the habit of pooh-poohing each other, and I own that I myself have been chiefly in touch with Portos, and that. my knowledge of the Bubi language runs to the conventional greeting form:- (, Ipori ?" H Porto." H Ke Soko?" I, Hatsi sako" :_H vVho are you? "_H Porto." C( What's the news? '/ {{ No news." Although these Portos are less interesting to the ethno- logist than the philanthropist, they being by-products of his efforts, I must not leave Fernando Po without mentioning them, for on them the trade of the island depends. They are the middlemen between the Bubi and the wh ite trader. The former regards them with little, if any, more trust than he regards the white men, and his view of the position of the Spanish Governor is that he is chief over the Portos. That he has any headship over Bubis or over the Bubi land- Itschulla as he calls Fernando Po-he does not imagine possible. Baumann says he was once told by a Bubi: "White men are fish, not men. They are able to stay a little while on land, but at last they mount their ships again and vanish over the horizon into the ocean. How can a fish possess land?" If the coffee and cacao thrive on Fernando Po to the same extent that they have already thriven on San Thome there is but little doubt that the Bubis will become extinct; for work on plantations, either for other people, or themselves, they will not, and then the Portos will become the most important class, for they will go in for plantations. Their little factories are studded all round the shores of the coast in suitable coves and 72 FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS CH. III bays, and here in fairly neat houses they live, collecting palm- oil from, the Bubis, and making themsel ves little cacao planta- tions, and bringing these products into Clarence every now and , then to the white trader's factory, Then, after spending some time and most of their money in the giddy whirl of that capital, they return to their homes and recover. There is a class of them permanently resident in Clarence, the city men of Fernando Po, and these are very like the Sierra Leonians of Free Town, but preferable, Their origin is prac- tically the same as that of the Free Towners, They are the descendants ' of liberated slaves set free during the time of our occupation of. the island as' a naval depot for suppressing the slave trade, and of Sierra Leonians and Accras who have arrived and settled since then, They have some of the same "Black gennellum, Sar" style about them, but not developed to the same ridiculous extent as in the Sierra Leonians, for they have not been under our institutions, The" Fanny Po " ladies are celebrated for their beauty all along the West Coast, arid very justly, They are not how- ever, as they themselves think, the ",ost beautiful women in this part of the world, Not at least to my way of thin'king. I prefer an Elmina, or an Igalwa, or a M'pongwe, or-but I had better stop and own that my affections have got very scattered among the black ladies on the 'vVest Coast, and I no sooner remember one lovely creature whose soft eyes, perfect form and winning, pretty ways have captivated me than I think of another. The Fanny Po ladies have often a certain amount of Spanish blood in them, which gives a decidedly greater delicacy to their features :-delicate little nostrils, mouths not too heavily lipped, a certain gloss on the hair, and a light in the eye. But it does not improve their colour, and I am assured that it has an awful effect on their tempers, so I think 1 will remain, for the present, the faithful admirer of my sable Ingrimma, the Igalwa, with. the little red blossoms stuck in her night-black hair, and a sweet soft look and word for everyone, but particularly for her ugly husband Isaac the" Jack \N'asb," CH APTER IV LAGOS BAR vVhich the general reader may omit as the voyager gives herei n no details of Old Calabar or of other things of general in terest) but discourses diffusely on the local geography and the story of the man who wasted coal. WILL not detain you with any account of the O il Ri vers here. They are too big a subject to compress for one thing; for another I do not feel that I yet know enough to have the right to speak regarding them, un less I were going to do so along accepted, well-trodden lines, and what I have seen and personally know of the reg ion does not make me feel at all inclined to do this. So I will wa it until I have had further opportunities of observing them. The natives I have worked at, but as their fetish is of ex- c€eding interest, I have relegated it to a separate chapter, owing to its unfitness to be allowed to stray about in the rest of the text, in order to make things generally tid ier. The state of confusion the m ind of a GO llector like myself gets into on the West Coast is something simply awful , and my notes for a day wi ll contain facts relating to the kraw-kraw, price of onions, size and number of fish caught, cooking recipes, genealogies, oaths (native form of), law cases, and market prices, &c., &c. And the undertaking of tidyi ng these thi ngs up is no small one. As for one's personal memory it becomes a rag-bag into which yo"u dip frantically when some one asks you a question , and you almost always fail to secure your particular fact rag for some minutes. After return;ng from the short vis it to Fernando Po made in their company, owing to the g reat kind- 74 LAGOS BAR CHAP. ----------------- ._---- ness of Sir Claude and Lady MacDonald remained in Calabar River from J anuary until May, collecting fish mainly through the kindness of Dr Whitindale, and insects through the kindness of Mr. Cooper, then in charge of the botanical station. Most of my time was spent puddling about the river and the forest round Duke Town and Creek Town, but I made a point on this visit to Calabar of going up river to see Miss Slessor at Okyon, and she allowed me to stay with her, giving me invaluable help in the matter of fetish and some of th€ pleasantest days in my life. This very wonderful lady has been eighteen years in Calabar ; for the last six or seven living entirely alone, as far as white folks go, in a clearing in the forest near to one of the principal villages of the Okyon district, and ruling as a veritable white chief over the entire Okyon district. Her great abilities, both physical and intellectual, have given her among the savage tribe an unique position, and won her, from white and black who know her, a profound esteem. Her knowledge of the native, hi s language, his ways of thought, his diseases, his difficulties, and all that is his, is extraordinary, and the amount of good she has done, no man can fully estimate. Okyon, when she went there alone-living in the native houses while she built, with the assistance of the natives, her present house-was a district regarded with fear by the Duke and Creek Town natives, and practically unknown to Europeans. It was given, as most of the surrounding dis- tricts still are, to killing at funerals, ordeal by poison, and perpetual internecine wars. Many of these evil customs she has stamped out, and Okyon rarely gives trouble to its nominal rulers, the Consuls in Old Calabar, and trade passes freel y through it down to the sea-ports. This instance of what one ,,·hite can do would give many important lessons in \~Test Coast admi nistration and development. Only the sort of man Miss Slessor represents is rare. There are but few who have the same power of resist- ing the malarial climate, and of acquiring the language, and an insight into the negro mind, so perhaps after all it is no great wonder that Miss Slessor stands alone, as she certainly does. IV PERPLEXING GEOGRAPHY 75 After returning down river, I just waited until the Batanga, myoId friend, came into the river again, and then started for my beloved South " 'es t Coast- The various divisions of the ,,\fest Coast of Africa are very perplexing to a new comer. Starting from Sierra Leone coming sou th you first pass the Grain Coast, which is also called the Pepper or Kru Coast, or the Liberian Coast. Next comes the Ivory Coast, also known as the Half Jack Coast, or the Bristol Coast. Then comes the Gold Coast; then the old Slave Coast, now called the Popos; then Lagos, and then the Rivers, and below the Rivers the South ,,\fest Coast. In addition to these names you will hear the Timber Ports, and the \lVin'ard and Leeward Ports referred to, and it perplexes one when one finds a port, say Axim, referred to by one competent authority, i.e. a sea- captain, as a \~'in'ard port, by the next as a Timber, by the next as a Gold Coast port. I t is just as well to get the matter up if you intend frequenting the Bights of Biafra and Benin. J will just give you, as a hint to facilitate your researches, the information that the Bight of Benin commences at Cape St. Paul and ends at Cape Formosa; and the Bight of Biafra commences at Cape Formosa and ends at Cape Lopez. The Windward Coast is that portion between Cape Apollonia and the Secum River, just west of Accra. At this ri,-er the Leeward Coast begins, and terminates at the Volta. ,,\fhen I was on the coast in 1893, Cameroons River was regarded in nautical circles as a River. Now, a las for me! it is not, and getting from Calabar to Cameroons is a thing you ought to get a medal for, for the line of vessels that run from Liverpool to Calabar goes no further than the latter place. In former days they used to call in at Calabar, then go across to Fernando Po and into Cameroons, calling steadily at ports right down to Sant. Paul de Loanda, wh ich was a highly convenient and beautiful arrangement, but I presume did not pay; so the South West Coast boats, that is to say boats calling below Calabar, now call at Lagos, and thus ignore the Ri vers, going straight on into Cameroons Ri ver. So you see, if you have providentially kept your head clear during this disqui sition, I had to go on a homeward bound boat up as far as Lagos Bar and then catch a South Wester LAGOS BAR CHAP. outward bound, and assure you changrng at L agos Bar throws changing at Clapham Junction into the shade. :\ ow in order to make this latter point clear to that unfortunate victim the general reader, he, or she, must be dragged through a disquisition on Lagos and its bar. Lagos is a marvellous manifestation of the perversity of man coupled with the perversity of nature, being at one and the same time one of the most important exporting ports on the \;V est Afri can seaboard, and one of the most difficult to get at. The town of Lagos is situated on an island in the Lagos Ri ver, a river which is much given to go ing into lagoons and mud, and which has its bar about two miles out. The entire breamth of the channel through this bar is half a mile, at least on paper. On each side of this channel are the worst set of breakers in \;Vest Africa, and its resi,dent population consists of sharks, whose annual toll of human life is said by some authorities to be fourteen, by others forty, but like everything else connected "'ith Lagos Bar, it is uncertain , but bad. This entrance channel, however, at the best of times has not more than thirteen feet of ",ater on it, and so although the British African and Royal African lines of steamers are noble pedestrians, thinking nothing of walking a mile or so when occasion requires, and as capable of going over a grass-plot with the dew on it as any ocean vessels ever built, I am bound to own they do require a certain amount of water to get on with. They can sit high and dry on a sand or mud-bank-they prefer mud I mar re- mark-with any vesseL I have often been on them when engaged in this pastime, but it does undoubtedly cause delay, and this being the case they do not go alongside at Lagos, but lie outside the bar. . Now such is the pestilential nature of Lagos Bar that even the carefu lly built branch boats, the noble Dodo and Qwarra, to say nothing of the F01'cados and others, although drawing only ten feet, are liable to stick. For the channel, instead of sticking to its governmentally reported thirteen feet, is prone to be nine feet, and exceeding prone also to change its position; and moreover,e,"en supposing the branch boat to get across a ll right, the heavy swell outside ",ith its great rollers lounging along, intent on breaking on the bar, 1\' MRS, S. AND HER CRATES 77 looking like coiling snakes under a blanket, make the vessels lying broadside on to them play pendulum to an extent that precludes the discharging or taking on of heavy cargo; and heavy cargo has to come on and off for Lagos to the value of £1,566,243 a year. So as the 'Nest African trading vessels are enterprising and determined, particularly where palm oil is concerned, they arrange the matter by going and lying up Forcados River. This ri ver, which is 120 miles below Lagos, is a mouth of the Niger, and has a bar you can cross (if you don't mind a little walking), drawing seven - teen feet nine inches, This being the case they run just .inside Forcados River and then wait for the branch boat from Lagos to come and bring them their heavy cargo. \~,-hen they have got this on board, they proceed up coast and call off Lagos Bar, and another unfortunate branch boat brings off mails and passengers to them. 'Nell, the Batanga after leaving Calabar and calling at Bonny had duly waited for the branch boat in Forcados and ultimately got her and her cargo, with its attendant uproar; and an account of the latest iniquities of Lagos Bar which had one of its bad fits on just then and was capturing and wrecking branch boats galore; and we had the usual scene with Mrs. S. Mrs. S., I may remark, is a comely and large black lady, an old acquaintance of mine, hailing from Opobo and frequently going up and down to Lagos, in connection with trading affairs of her own, and another lady with whom Mrs. S. is in a sort of partnership. This trade usually consists of extensive operations in chickens. She goes up to Lagos and buys chickens, brings them on 'board in crates,and ,takes them to Opobo and there sells them. It is not for me as a fellow woman to say what Mrs. S. makes on the transaction, nor does it interest the genera l public, but .what does interest the general public (at least that portion of it that goes down to the sea in sh ips and for its sins wanders into Forcados River) is Mrs. S.'s return trip to Lagos with .those empty crates and the determination in her heart not to .pay freight for them. Wise and experienced chief officers never see Mrs. S.'s crates, but young and truculent ones do, ·and determine, in their hearts, she shall pay for them, ad- .vertising this resolve of theirs openly all the way from Opobo, LAGOS BAR CHAP. which is fooli sh. When it comes to sending heavy goods overside into the branch boat at Forcados, the wise chief officer lets those crates go, but the truculent one says, " Here, Mrs. S., now you have got to pay for these crates." " Lor' mussy me, sar," says NIrs. S., (C what you talk about? " ,< These here chicken crates of yours, Mrs. S." {j Lor' mussy me," says IvIrs. S., {( those crates no 'long to me, sar." H Then," says the truculent one, (( heave 'em over side! W€. don't want that stuff lumbering up our deck." Mrs. S. then expostulates and explains they are the property of a lone lorn lady in Lagos to whom Mrs. S. is taking them from the highest motives; motives" such a nice gentleman" as the first officer must understand, and which it will be a pleasure to him to share in, and she cites instances of .other chief officers who accord ing to her have felt, as it were, a ray of sunlight come into their lives when they saw those chicken crates and felt it was in their power to share in the noble work of return- ing them to Lagos freight free. The truculent one then loses his head and some of his temper and avows himsel f a heart- less villain, totally indifferent to the sex, and says all so rts of things, but my faith in the ultimate victory of Mrs. S. never wavers. My money is on her all the time, and she has never di sappointed me, and when I am quite rich some day, I will g ive Mrs. S. purses of gold in the eastern manner for the many delicious scenes she has played before me with those crates in dreary Forcados. These affairs being duly disposed of, the Bata1lga left Forcados and duly proceeded up coast to call off Lagos for mai ls and passengers; my fate being to go on to the branch boat which brought these out,and which I then expected would take me in to L agos, to await the arrival of the south-west outward bound boat. I had been treated, as passengers landing at Lagos are p roperly and customarily treated, to a course of instruction on the dangers of going on and off branch boats on the bar, with special mention of the case of a gentleman who came down the Coast for pleasure ' and lost a leg to a shark while so en- gaged, and of the amount of fe ver of a bad type just then IV CROSSING THE BAR 79 raging in Lagos; and then when we saw the branch boat that was coming out to us get stuck on the bar in the middle of what a German would cal! a -vVirrwarr of breakers, I own it took al! the fascina tion of my memories of the South ' Nest Coast to prevent my giving up the journey, and going home to England comfortably on the Batallga, as my best friends strongly ad vised my doing. However presently the branch boat stamped her way over the bar, and came panting up, and anchored near us, and from her on to the Batanga came a Lagos Government official in a saturated state. He said he had just come out to see holY a branch boat could get across the bar at low water-a noble and enterprising thing which places him in line wi th the Elder Pliny. He entertained us with a calm, utterly dispassionate account of how the water had washed right over them, gone down th€ funnel and all that so rt of thing-evidently a horribly commonplace experience here; and he said the Eko (that was our branch boat's name) was not going back into Lagos until she had put the down coast mail and over a hundred deck- passengers who were going to the Congo, on to the South vVest Coast boat, which was hourly expected in the roads, as she had been telegraphed from Accra. H e casual!y observed he hoped she would not be late in the afternoon as he had to go up country in the morning on the Government steamer. vVel!, things seeming safe and pleasant, I wen t off to the branch boat, being most carefully lowered over the side in a chair by the winch. " Take care of yourself," said the Batanga. " I will," said I, which shows the futili ty and vanity of such resolves, for had not other people taken care of me, goodness only knows what would have become of me. A rri ved along- side of the Eko, I proceeded up her rope-ladder on deck, and that deck I shal! not soon forget. The Government official had understated the case; things were in a sp ring-cleaning confusion: the waves had not made a clean sweep of her but an u~commonly dirty one, and it wou ld have been better if she had stuck among the breakers another half hour and given the sea-nymphs time to t idy up. They had made especial hay of the gallant captain 's cabin, flin ging out on to 80 LAGOS BAR CHoAP, the deck his socks and hats and boots just anyhow, and over all and everything was a coating of wet coal-dust. On the little lower deck were the unfortunate native passengers. They were silent, which with native passengers means sick, and every rag they possessed was wringing wet. Rats ran freely about everywhere, and from out of the black patch of silence on the main deck rose no sound save Mrs. S.'s Cltei! Cltei! Chez! of disgust and disapproval of her surroundings. The kindly German captain (for the Eko belonged to a great German trading firm in Lagos, and not to the steamboat companies) did all he could to make me comfortable, and the Government official pointed out to me objects of interest on the distant shore : the lighthouse, the Government House, the Wilberforce Hall, and so on, but particularly the little Govern- ment steamer which, he observed, was getting up steam to be ready to take him up river early in the morning. He seemed to think they were beginning rather too early, as the Govern- ment are vig ilant about the si n of wasting coal. As the after- noon wore away, our interest in the coming of the Bengue!!a grew until it su rpassed all other interests, and the Bengue!!a became the one thing we really cared about in life, and yet she came not. The little Eko roll ed to and fro, to and fro, all the loose gear going slipperty, slop, crash; slipperty, slop, crash: coal-dust, smuts, and a broil ing Slln poured down on us quietly, and the only thi ng or motion that gave us any variety was every three or four minutes the Eko making a vicious jerk at her anchor. A bout six o'clock a steamer was seen coming up into the roads. The experienced captain said she was not the Benglte!!a, and she was not, but theJa"ette T¥oerlilann, and as soon as she got settled, her captain came on board the Eko, of course to ask what prospect there was of cargo on shore. He appeared as a gigantic, lithe, powerful Dane clad in a uniform of great splendour and exceeding tightness, terminat- ing in a pair of Blucher boots and every inch of hi s six feet four spick and span, but that \\"as only the yisible form-his external seelning. \Nhat that man really was, was OUf two guardian cherubs rolled into one, for no sooner did he lay eye on us-the depressed and di stracted official and the dilapi- dated lady-than he claimed liS as his o\\"n, and in a few more IV A FRfEN D 1"1 NEED 81 --- - --- -------------- minutes we were playing bob cherry again with Lagos Bar sharks, going down into his boat by the Eko's rope-ladder. vVere I but Khalif of Baguad, I wou ld have that captain's name-which is Heldt- written in letters of gold on ivory tablets with a full and particular account of a ll he did for us. )/0 sooner did he successfull y get us on board hi s comfort- able vessel, than he gave me hi s own cabin on the upper deck and stowed himself in some sort of outhouse alongside it, wh ich I observed, when go ing out on deck during the night to see if that Bengllef!a had come in to the roads, was far too short for him. He gave us dinner with great promptitude- an excellent dinner commencing with what I thought was a plateful of hot jam, but which anyhow was nice. Indeed so reconciled did I become to my environment that my interest in the com ing of. the Benglte!!a hourly waned, and had it not been for my hav ing caught a sense of worry about (( the way coals were being wasted" on the Government boat inside the bar, I shou ld have forgotten the South-vVester. Not so my compan ion. You cannot distract a man from th€ h igher duties and responsi- bilities of life so easily. His mind was a prey to the most dismal thoughts and conjectures. H e regretted having come out on the E ko, although his mot ive to see how she ,,'ould get across the bar at low water was a noble one and a rose from the nature of hi s particular appo intment, and not only did he regret that, but remembered, with remorse, a ll the oth\!r thi ngs he had done which he should not have done. Captain Heldt did hi s best to cheer him and distract hi m from the contemplation of these things and the way coal was being wasted ,on his account inside the bar. The captain offered h im suits of his own clothes to change his sopped ones for; but no, he said he \\'as lost enough a lready without gett ing into clothes of that size. Lager beer, cigars, and stories were then tried on him, but wi th lit t le effect. He took a certa in amount of interest in the captain 's account of how he had had his back severely injured and had had to navigate his vessel among the shoals of Saint Ann while lying in great agony for weeks owing to an accident in the Grain Coast surf, and also in the various accou nts of the many ribs the captain had had broken in vari ous ways on the high seas, but any G LAGOS BAR CHAP_ legend of a more cheerful character than these he evidently felt was unfitted to our situation, and flippant, considering the way those coals were being wasted. Still the Bengllella came not, thougli! we sat up very late looking for her, and at last we turned in . " The next morning we were up early. There was no. Benguella. The Eko was still rolling about near us waiting for her, and the Eko's passengers having had, as I heard, in vivid account some months after from Mrs. S. with many cltei! clteis! a wretched, ratful, foodless night, the Eko naturally not laying herself out for water pic-nic parties. Vie fared well on the janette, our guardian angel providing us with an excellent breakfast. My fellow countryman's anxiety had now passed into a dark despair. He no longer looked for the South-\;Vester. It was past that ; but he borrowed Captain Heldt's best telescope and watched the Government steamer, which lay smoking away like a Turkish man-of-war, waiting for him. Captain Heldt tried to chee r him with more stories, lager beer, and cigars, and at last produced an auto-harp, an instrument upon ,,"h ich he was himself proficient and capable of playing not on ly the march from "Ajax," but" Der vVacht am Rhein" and "Annie Laurie." This temporari ly took my fellow countryman's mind off coals, and he set about to acquire the management of the auto-harp and rapidly did so, but then he only picked out with infinite feeling and pathos. (( Home) Sweet Home," so it was taken from him. Then we had long accounts of the region round the S"'akop river,. from which the ja1lette had just come, and at last, about two o'clock, my fell ow countryman sadly said: " Here she comes! " and there she did come, and in a short time the graceful old Benguella was duly anchored in the roads and I was taken on board by my two friends. \~le none of us felt very enthusiastic, I fear. I had ne,'er been on her before, so regarded her as an utter stranger. My fellow countryman felt it was a hanging matter by now for him on shore, because of those coals, and so did not feel in such a hurry to get there. And to Captain Heldt she was a ri val. But often those things which you expect least of ultimately give you the most pleasure, as the moralist would IV GOODBYE TO THE BAR say, and moreover when you are on the Coast you ne\"er know whom you may meet; and as I, after a good deal· of trouble in the janette's boat to get my c\Then, a few months after our amusing experiences on it, it went on worse than ever, and vessel after vessel was wrecked, he rescued their passengers and crews at the great risk of his own life; for going alongside a vessel that is breaking up in the breakers, and in an open boat with a native crew, and getting off panic-stricken Africans and their belongings, surrounded by such a sea, with its crowd of expectant sharks, in the \>\Test Afri can climate, is good work for a good man, and my fellow- countryman did it and did it well. G 2 CHAPTER V VOYAGE DOWN COAST \;Vherein the voyager before lea,·i ng the Rivers discourses on dangers, to which is added some account of Mangrove swamps and the creatures that abide therein, including the devil of an uncle. lVlv voyage down coast in the Benguella was a very pleasant one and full of instruction, for Mr. Fothergill , who was her purser, had in former years resided in Congo Fran- «a is as a merchant, and to Congo Franhe first writer on them, Du Cbaillu) Fans, I keep that name .. They are also referred to as the M'pangwe, the Pahouines, the Fam-Fam,. the Osheba, and the Ba-fann. The latter is a plural form. VII TAKE PASSAGE ON THE ECLAIREUR 135 said" Urn," and then laid hold of an old lady and pointed to her and then to the roof, meaning..!:'.learly I had eqlIal ly damaged both, and that she was equally valuable. I squared the family all right, and I returned to Kangwe vic! Fula, without delay and without the skin on my elbow. \¥ishing to get higher up the Ogowe, I took the opportunity of the river boat of the Chargeurs Reunis going up to the Njole on one of her trips, and joined her. VIEW OF OKE BRAKCH OF THE OGOWE FRO~l KANGWE. June 221Zd-b;c!ai,-eur, charming little stern wheel steamer, exquisitely kept. She has an upper and a lower deck. The lower deck for business, the upper deck for white passengers only. On the upper deck there is a fine long deck house, running almost her whole length. In this are the officers' cabins, the saloon and the passengers' cabins (two), both large and beautifully fitted up. Captain Verdier exceedingly pleasant and constantly saying" N'est-ce pas?" A quiet and singularly clean engineer completes the white staff Tht pas~engers consist of Mr. Cockshut, going up river to see after the THE OGOwt CHAP. ---------~------ sub-factories ; a French official bound for Franceville, which it \ViII take him thirty-six days, go as quick as he can, in a canoe after Njole; a tremendously lively person who has had black water fever four times, while away in the bush with nothing to li ve on but manioc, a diet it would be far easier to die on under the circumstances. H e is excellent company; though I do not know a word he says, he is perpetually givi ng lively and dramatic descriptions of things which I cannot but recognise. M. S--, with his pince-nez, the Doctor, and, above all, the rapids of the Ogowe, rolling his hands round and round each other and dash ing them forward with a descriptive ejaculation of "\~l hi sh, flash , bum, bum, bump," and then comes what evidently represents a terrific fi ght for life against terrific odds. \Nish to goodness I knew French, for wish ing to see these rapids, I cannot help feeling anxious and worried at not fully understand ing this d ramatic enterta inment rega rding them. There is another passenger said to . be the engineer's brother, a quiet, gentle- manly man. Captain argues violently with every one; witll Mr. Cockshut on the subject of the wicked \I'aste of money in keeping the iV/OVe and not shipping all goods by the EclaireU1-, " n'est-ce pas?" and with the French official on good- ness knows what, but I fancy it \.vi ll be pistols for t\l'O and coffee for one in the morning time. \Nhen the captain feel s h imself be ing worsted in argument, he shouts for support to the engineer and his brother. " N 'est-ce pas? JJ he says, turning furi ously to them. " Oui , oui , certainement," they sar dutifullr and calmly, and then he, refreshed by their support, dashes back to his contrO\'ersial fray. H e even tries to get up a rO\l' with me on the subject of the English merchants at Calabar, whom he asserts have sworn a kind of blood oath to ship by none but Brit ish A frican Company's steamers. I cannot stand th is, for I know my esteemed and honoured friends the Calaba r traders would shi p by the FlyiJlg DlttclllJlf!lt or the devi l h imself if either of them would take the stuff a t 155. t he ton. Vi e have, however, to lea\'e off this 1' 0 \1' for \I"ant of Jang uage, to our mutual regret, for it would ha,'e been a !oye of a fi ght. Soon after leav ing Lembarene Island, \\e pass the \"11 THE BITER BIT 137 mouth of the chief southern affiuent of the Ogowe, the ~gunie; it fl ows in unostentatiously from the E.s.E., a broad, quiet river here with low banks and two islands (Walker's islands) showing just off its entrance. Higher up, it fl ows through a mountainous countr)" and at Samba, its furthest navigable point, there is a wonderfully beautiful waterfall, the whole river coming down over a low cliff, surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains. It takes the Eclaireltr two days steaming from the mouth of the l'\gun ie to Samba, when she can get up ; but now, in tbe height of the long dry season neither she nor the lV[ove can go because of the sand banks; so Samba is cut off until next October. Hatton and Cookson have factories up at Samba, for it is an outlet for the trade of Achango land in rubber and ivor)" a trade . worked b)' the Akele tribe, a powerfu l, savage and difficult lot to deal with, and just in the same condition, as far as I can learn, as they were when Du Chaillu made his ,,"onderful journeys among them. \Vhile I was at Lembarene, waiting for the Ec!airCltr, a notorious chief descended on a :-\Then in the forest there are two lines of huts, the one faci ng the other, and each end closed by a guard house. \Vhcn facing a river there is one line of huts faci ng the ri,-er frontage. VII A FAREWELL SALUTE 139 O\'er the side into them. Canoes rock wildly and wobble off rapidly towards the bank, frightening the passengers because they have got their best clOthes on, and fear that the Eclaireur will start and upset them altogether with her wash. On reaching the bank, the new arrivals disappear into brown clouds of wives and relations, and the dogs into fighting clusters of resident dogs. Happy, happy day! For those men \"ho have gone ashore have been away on hire to the govern- ment and factories for a year, and are safe home in the bosoms of their families again , and not only they themselves, but all the goods they have got in pay. The remaining passengers belo,,' still yell to their departed friends; I know not what they say, but I expect it's the Fan equivalent for "Mind you write. Take care of yourself Yes, I 'll come and see you soon," &c., &c. \~ihile all this is going on, the Eclai1'e1lr quietly slides down river, with the current, broadside on as if she smelt her stable at Lembarene. This I find is her constant habit when- e\'er the captain, the engineer, and the man at the ,,·heel are all busy in a ro,,· along the rail, shouting o\'erside, which occurs whenever we have passengers to land. Her iniquity being detected when the last canoe load has left for the shore, she is spun round and sent up ri ver again at full speed. Just as this is being done, the inhabitants of the country salute the captain with a complimentary salvo of guns. I am quietly leaning against the side of his cabin door at the time, when bang comes his answel ing salute from out of it, within three- and-a-half inches of my right ear. Sensation of stun for minutes. Captain apologetic; he " did not know I was there." I am apologetic too; I did know he was there," but I did not know he was going to fire offhis gun ?)J (( He is forgiven." If N'est-ce pas?" (( Qui) oui, certainement," say I, quotir:g the engineer. Peace restored. Vie go on up stream; no\\" and again stopping at little villages to land passengers or at little sub-factories to discharge cargo, until evening closes in, when we anchor and tie up at O'Saomokita, where there is a sub-factory of Messrs. Woer- mann's, in charge of which is a white man, the only white man between Lembarene and Njole. He comes on board and looks THE OGOWE CHAP. t to embarrass Hatton and Cookson's do mestic economy by going into the factory. Besides, I see before me to the left a real road, the first road I have seen for months. I tell Mr. Cockshut I wil l go for a walk; he seems J44 THE OGOWE CHAP. rel ieved, and I start off down the road alone. L ovely road, bright yellow clay, as hard as paving stone. On each side it is most neatly hedged with pine-apples; behind these, carefully tended, acres of coffee bush€s planted in long rows. Certainly coffee is one of the most 1m-ely of. crops. I ts grandly shaped leaves are like those of our medla r tree, only darker and richer g reen, the berries set close to the stem, those that are ripe, a CAFfEA LlBERI CA-LIBERIAN COFFEE. rich crimson; these trees, I think, are about three years old, and just coming into bearing; for they a re co\-ered with full - sized berries, and there has been a flush of bloom on them this morning, and the del icious fragrance of thei r stephanotis-shaped and scented fl owers lingers in the air. The country spreads before me a lovely valley encompassed by purple-blue moun- tains. Mount Talagouga -looks splendid in a soft , infinitely deep blue, although it is quite close, just tbe other side of the VII i\ JARDIN D'ACCLIMATATION 145 ri,'er. The road goes on into the valley, as pleasantly as e,'er and mOre so. How pleasant it would be now, if our government along the Coast had the enterprise and public spirit of the French, and made such roads just on the remote chance of stray travellers dropping in on a steamer once in ten years or so and wanting a walk. Observe extremely neatly Igalwa built huts, people sitting on the bright clean ground outside them, making mats and baskets, " Mboloani," say I. " Ai Mbolo," say they, and knock off work to stare, Observe large wired-in enclosures on left-hand side of road-investigate-find they are tenanted by animals-goats, sheep, chickens, &c. Clearly this is a Jardin daec!Z1IZatation, No wonder the colony does not pay, if it goes in for this sort of thing, 206 miles inland, with simply no public to pay gate-money. \~Thile contemplating these things, hear awful hiss. Serpents! No, geese. Awfu l fight. Grand things, good, old-fashioned, long ski rts are for Africa! Get through geese and ad,'ance in good . order, but somewhat rapid ly down road , turn sharply round corner of native houses. Turkey cock-terrific turn up. Flight on my part forwards down road) which is still going stron g) now in a northerly direction, apparently indefinitely . Hope .to good- ness there will be a turning that I can go down and get back by, without returning through th is ferocious farmyard. Intent on picking up such an outlet, I go thirty yards or so down the road, Hear shouts coming from a clump of bananas on my left, Know they are directed at me, but it does not do to attend to shouts always. Expect it is only some nati,'e with an awful knowledge of Engl ish, anxious to get up my family history-therefore accelerate. pace. More shouts, and louder, of "Madame Gacon! Madame Gacon! " and out of the banana clump comes a big, plump, pleasant-looking gen- tleman, clad in a sing let and a'divided sk irt. White people must be attended to, so advance carefully towards him through a plantation of young coffee, apologising humbl y for in truding on his domain. He smi les and bows beautifull y, but-horror! -he knows no English, I no French. Situation tres ino:plie- able et tres interessallte, as I subsequently heard him remark; and the worst of it is he is e"iden tl y bursting to know who I L 146 THE ' OGOWE CHAP. am, and what I am doing in the middle of his coffee plantation, for his it clearly is, as appears from his obsequious body-guard of blacks, highly interested in me a lso. V';e gaze at each other, and smile some more, but stiffly, and he stands bareheaded in the sun in an awful way. It's murder I'm committing, hard all! He, as is fitting for his superior sex, displays intelli- gence first and says, " Interpreter," waving his hand to the south. I say" Yes," in my best Fan, an enthusiastic, intel- ligent grunt which anyone must understand. He leads the way back towards those geese-perhaps, by the by, that is why he wears those divided skirts-and we enter a beautifully neatly built bam bOlD house, and sit down opposite to each other at a table and wait for the interpreter who is being fetched. The house is low on the ground and of native construction, but most beautifully kept, and arranged with an air of artistic feeling quite as unexpected as the rest of my surroundings. I notice upon the walls sets of pictures of terrific incidents in Algerian campaigns, and a copy of that superb head of M. de Brazza in Arab headgear. Soon the black minions who have been sent to find one of the plantation hands who is supposed to know French and English, return with the" interpreter." That young man is a fraud. He does not know English--not even coast English -and a ll he has got under his precious wool is an abysmal ignorance darkened by terror; and so, after one or two futile attempts and some frantic scratching at both those regions which an African seems to regard as the seats of intellectual inspiration, he bolts out of the door. Situatioll terrible ! My host and I smile wildly at each other, and both wonder in our respect ive languages what, in the words of IVIr. Squeers as mentioned in the classics- we" shall do in this 'ere most awful go." \Ne are both going mad with the strain of the situation, when in walks the engineer's brother from the Eclaireu,'. He seems intensely surprised to find me sitting in his friend the planter's parlour after my grim and retiring conduct on the Ecla':"eur on my voyage up. But the planter tells him all, sousing him in torrents of words, full of the "iolence of an outbreak of pent-up emotion. I do not understand what he says, but I catch "tres illfL1jJ/icable" and things like that. The calm brother of the eng ineer s its down at the table, and I YII A MODEL PLANTATION 147 am sure tells the planter something like this: "Calm yourself, my friend, we picked up this curiosity at Lembarene. It seems quite harmless." And then the- planter calmed, and mopped a perspiring brow, and so did I , and we smiled more freely, feel- ing the mental atmosphere had become less tense and cooler. 'Ve both simply beamed on our deliverer, and the plante,· ga\·e him lots of things to drink. I had nothing about me except a head of tobacco in my pocket, which I did not feel \I·as a suitable offering. Now the eng ineer's brother, although he would not own to it, knew English, so I told him how the beauty of the road had lured me on, and how I was interested in coffee-planting, and how much I admired the magnifi - cence of this plantation, and all the enterpri se and energy it represented. Ie Qui, oui) certainement," sa id he, and translated. JVl y friend the planter seemed charmed; it was the first sign of anything approaching reason he had seen in me. He wanted me to ha\·e eall slteree more kindly than eyer, and when I rose, intending to bow myself off and go) geese or no geese) back to the Eclaire",', he would not let me go. I must see the plantation, toltte fa plantatioll. So presently a ll three of us go out and thoroughl y do the plantation, the most well - ordered, well-cultivated plantation I have eve r seen, and a very noble monument to the knowledge and industry of the planter. For two hot hours these two perfect gentlemen showed me over it. I also behaved well, for petticoats, great as they are, do not prevent insects and catawumpuses of sorts walking up one's ankles and feeding on one as one stands on the long g rass which has been mosfwisely cut and laid round the young trees for mulching. This plantation is of great extent on the hill-sides and in the valley bottom, portions of it are just com ing in to bearing. The whole is kept as perfectly as a ga rden, amazing as the work of one white man with only a staff .of unskill ed nati ve labourers-at present only eighty of them. The coffee planted is of three kinds, the Elephant berry, the A rabian, and the San Thome. During our inspection, \I·e only had one serious misu nder- standing, which arose from my seeing for the first time in my life tree-ferns growing in the Ogowe. There were three of them L 2 THE OCOWE CHAP_ evidently carefull y taken care of, among some coffee plants. I t was highly exciting, and I tried to find out about them. It seemed, even in this centre of enterprise, unlikely that they had been brough t just" for dandy" from the Australasian region, and I had never yet come across them in my wanderings save on F ernando Po. Unfortunately, my friends thought I wanted them to keep, and shouted for men to bring things and dig them up; so I had a brisk little engagement with the men, driving them from their prey with the point of my umbrella, ejaculating Kor Kor, like an agitated crow. \Vhen at last they understood that my interest in the ferns was scientific, not piratical, they called the men off and explained that the ferns had been found among the bush, when it was being cleared fOl- the plantation. Ultimately, with many bows and most sincere thanks from me, we parted, providentially beyond the geese, and I returned down the road to Njole, where I find Mr. Cockshut waiting outside his factory. He insists on taking me to the Post to see the Administ rator, and from there he says I can go on to the Ec!ai1'elw from the Post beach, as she will be up there from Du mas'. Off we go up the road which ski rts the river bank, a dwarf clay cliff, overgrown \I·i th \'egetation, sa\'e where it is cleared fo r beaches. T he road is short, but exceedingly pretty; on the other side from the ri\'er is a steep bank on which is growing a plantation of cacao. L ying out in the centre of the ri ver you see Njole Island, a low, sandy one, timbered not only with bush, but with orange and other fruit trees ; for fo rmerly the Post and factories used to be situated on the island-now only their trees "emain for \'arious reasons, one being that in the wet season it is a good deal under \I·ater. Everythi ng is now situated on the mainland north bank, in a straggling but picturesque line; first comes vVoermann's factory, then H atton and Cookson's, and John H olt's, close together wLth a beach in common, in a sweetly amicable style for factories, who as a rule firmly stockade themseh'es off from their next door neighbours. Then Dumas' beach, a little native village, the cacao patch and the Post at the up ri\'er end of things European, an end of things European, I am told, for a matter of 500 miles. Immediately beyond the YII THE FRENCH AD~'lI0IISTRATOR '49 Post is a little river falling into the Ogowe, and on its further bank a small village belonging to a chief, who, hearing of the glories of the Government, came down like the Queen of Sheba-in intention, I mean, not personal appearance-to see it, and so charmed has he been that here he stays to gaze on it. Although Mr. Cockshut hunted the Administrator of the Ogowe out of his bath, that gentleman is exceedingly amiable and charming, all the more so to me for speaking good English. Personally, he is big, handsome, exuberant, and energetic. He shows me round with a gracious enthu- siasm, all manner of things-big gorilla teeth and heads, native spears and brass-nail-ornamented guns; and explains, "'hile we are in his study, that the little model canoe full of Kola nuts is the supply of Kola to enable him to sit up all night and work. Then he takes us outside to see the new hospital which he, in his capacity as Administrator, during the absence of the professional Administrator on leave in France, has granted to himself in his capacity as Doctor; and he shows us the captive chief and headman from Samba busi ly quarrying a clay cliff behind it so as to enlarge the governmenta l plateau, and the ex-ministers of the ex-King of Dahomey, who are deported toNjole,atld apparently comfortable and employed in various non-menial occupations. Then we go down the little avenue of cacao trees in full bearing, and away to the left to where there is now an encampment of Adoomas, who have come down as a convoy from Franceville, and are going back with another under the command of our vivacious fellow passenger, who, I grieve to see, will have a rough time of it in the way of accommodation in those narrow, shallow canoes which are lying with their noses tied to the bank, and no other white man to talk to. What a blessing he wi ll be con- versationally to Franceville when he gets in. The Adooma encampment is very picturesque, for they have got their bright- coloured chintz mosquito-bars erected as tents. Dr. Pelessier then insists on banging down monkey bread-fruit with a stick, to show me their inside. Of course they burst over hi s beautiful white clothes. I said they would, but men will be men. Then we go and stand under the two THE OGOWE CHAP_ lovely odeaka trees that make a triumphal-arch-like gate\l'ay to the Post's beach from the river, and the doctor discourses in a most interesting way on all sorts of subjects, 'vVe go on wait- ing for the Ec!airelt1-, who, although it is past four o'clock, is still down at Dumas' beach, I feel nearly frantic at detaining the Doctor, but neither he nor Mr, Cockshut seem in the least hurry, But at last I can stand it no longer, The vision of the Adminis- trator of the Ogow", worn out, but chewing Kola nut to keep himself awake all night wh ile he fin ishes hi s papers to go down on the Eelah-wl- to-mo rrow morning, is too painful; so I say I will walk back to Dumas' and go on the Eelaireztr there, and try to liberate the Administrator from his present engage- ments, so that he may go back and \I'ork. No good! He will come down to Dumas' \I'ith Mr. Cockshut and me, Off we go, and just exactly as we are getting on to Dumas' beach, off starts the Eelail'eur with a shriek for the Post beach_ So I say good-bye to Mr. Cockshut, and go back to the Post with Dr, Pelessier, and he sees me on board, and to my immense relief he stays on board a good hour and a half, talking to other people, so it is not on my head if he is up all night. June 25tk-Eelaireur has to wait for the Ad ministrator until ten, because he has not done his mails, At ten he comes on board like an amiable tornado, for he himsel f is going to Cape Lopez, I am grieyed to see them carrying on board , too, a French official very ill with fe\'er. He is the engineel- of the cannonier, and they are taking him dOlrn to Cape L opez, where they hope to get a ship to take him up to Gaboon, and to the hospital on the illiJlcrv! I heard sub- sequently that the poor fellow died about fort)" hours after lea\'ing Njole at Achyouka in Kama countr)", Vie get away at last, and run rapidl)" down ri\'er, helped b)- the terrific current. The Eelaire"r has to call at Talagouga for planks from M, Gacon's sa\l'm ill. As soon as we are past the tail of Talagouga Island, the Eelaireur ties her \rhistle string to a stanchion, and goes off into a series of screaming lits, as only she can, \A,ihat she ,,'ants is to get iVI. Forget or M, Gacon, or better still both, out in their canoes with the \I'ood waiting for her, because" she cannot anchor in the depth," \"11 THE ECLAIREUR IN A TEMPER 1 51 " nor can she turn round," and " backing plays the mischief "'ith any ship's engines," and" she can 't hold her own against the current," and-then Captain Verdier says things I won't repeat, and thro\\'s his weight passionately on the whistle string, for we are in sight of the narrow gorge of Talagollga, with the Mission Station apparently slumbering in the sun. This puts the Edail'eZt1' in an a,,'ful temper. She goes dO\m towards it as near as she dare, and then fri sks round again, and runs up river a little \\'ay and drops down again, in \'iolent hysterics the whole time. Soon M. Gacon comes along among the trees on the bank, and laughs at her. A rope is thrown to him, and the panting Edail'e1t1' tied up to a tree close in to the bank, for the \yater is deep enough here to moor a liner in, only there are a good many rocks. [n a few minutes M. Forget and several canoe loads of beaut iful red-brown mahogany planks are on board, and things being fini shed, I say good-bye to the captain, and go off with M. Forget in a canoe, to the shore. CHAPTER VIII TALAGOUGA Concerning the district of TaJagouga, with observations and admonjtions on the capture of serpents. MiI[E. FORGET received me most kindly and hospitably, she, with her husband and her infant daughter, and M. and Mme. Gacon represent the Mission E vangeJique and the white race at Talagouga. Mme. Gacon is the lady the planter took me for; and when I saw her, with her sweet young face and masses of pale gold-coloured hair, I felt highly flattered. Either that planter must be very short-sighted or the colour of my hair must have misled him, not that mine is pale gold, but hay-coloured. I don't know how he did it. Mme. Forget is a perfectly lovely French girl, with a pale transparent skin and the most perfect great dark eyes, with indescribable charm, g race of manner, and vivacity in conversation. It g rieves me to think of her, wasted on this savage wilderness surrounded by its deadly fever air. Oranie Forget, otherwise the baby, although I am not a general admirer of babies of her age-a mere matter of months-is also charming; I am not saying this because she flattered me by taking to me- all babies and children do that-but she has great style, and I have no doubt she will g row up to be a beauty too, but she wo uld have made a dead certainty of it, if she had taken after her mother. The mission stat ion at TaJagouga is hitched on to the rocky hillside, which rises so abruptly from the river that there is hardly room for the narrow footpath wh ich runs along the ri ver frontage of it. And when you are on the Forgets' \·erandah it seems as if you could easily roll right off it into the dark, deep, hurrying Ogo\\'e. I suggest this to Mme. F orget as ~ CH:\P. VII( THE MISSION STATION ' 53 an awfu l future for Oranie, but she has thought of it and wired the verandah up. You go up a steep flight of steps in to the house, which is raised on pole'S some fifteen feet above the ground in front , and you walk through it against the hillside, made up mostly of enormous boulders of quartz, for Talagouga mountains are the western termination of the side o f the Sierra del Cristal range. \;I,Ihen you get through the house you come to more stairs, cut out now in the hillside rock and leading to the STATIO?\' OF THE )'IISS10X -EXA:\GELlQUE, TALAGOUGA. kitchen to the right, and to the store buildings; to the left they continue up to the church, which is still higher up the hill-face. That church is the prettiest I have seen in Africa. I do not say I should like to sit in it, because there seems to me no proper precautions taken to exclude snakes, lizards, or insects, and there would be great difficulty in concentrating one's mind on the higher life in the presence of these fearfully prevalent lower forms. Talago uga church commences as a J 54 TALAGOUGA CHAP. strong wooden framework on which is hung the bell, and then to the right of this structure, is another which is a roof sup- ported by bare poles. At its lower end there is a little daIs on which stands a table and a chair, the yellow clay floor slopes abruptly up hill and the pe\\'s consist of round, none too thick, poles, neatly mounted on stumps, some ten inches from the ground. I should have thought those pews were quite perfec- tion for an African congregation; but they tell me I am wrong and that even Elders go off sound asleep on them, quite com- fortably, I suppose like bats; I don't mean upside down, you understand, but merely by an allied form of muscular action, the legs clinching on to the pole-pew during sleep. Beyond the church, the hillside is cut by a ral'ine, and out of the dense forest that grows in it runs a beautiful, clear stream. It has been dammed back above, for it is harnessed to M. Gacon's saw-mill. The building of this dam, the erection of the two big water-wheels, the saw, and the shed that covers it, indeed all the work connected with the affair, has been done by M. Gacon with his own hands, and not only has he dammed back the water, and put up his saw-mill, but he still works hard at it daily, cutting hundreds of fine red-wood planks for the service of the mission, shipping them by the Eclaireur, in flighty little canoes in this risky bit of river, and keeping a big store of them under his house-a bamboo structu re, once Talagouga church-and all this with no other assistance but unskilled native labour. '.>Vhat this means you might under- stand a little if I were to write details from June to January, and then you were to come out here and take a turn at some such job you rsel f, to finish off your education. Across the other side of the ravine and high up, is perched the house which Dr. Nassau built, when he first established mission work on the Upper Ogowe. The house is now in ruins; but in front of it, as an illustration of the transitory nature of European life in \;Vest Africa, is the gral'e of Mrs. Xassau, among the great white blocks of quartz rock, its plain stone looking tbe one firm, permanent, human-made-thing about tbe place; below it, clown the hill, are some houses inhabited b)' the natil'e employes on the station: and passing these, still going c10WJl towards the ril'er, J'ou come to a wooden bridgespanning ~ YIIl A HANGING GARDEN 155 the mill-stream, and crossing this, you find yourself back on the path which goes in front of M. Gacon's house; passing this you come to the house 'nhabited by the girls in the mission school, presided over by the comely Tmgrimina, wife of Isaac, the Jack- \~rash, and a few steps more bring you to the foot of the Forgets' verandah staircase. The path runs on a little beyond this to the east, on a slightly broader, level bit of ground, behind which rises the hill side, and it ends abruptly at another ra,'ine with another, but smaller, stream; beyond this the hills come down right into the river, and on the small, flat piece of ground there are a few more nati" e houses, belonging to the Bible-readers, and so on; up on the hillside above them hangs a garden, apparently kept in position by quantities of stout wooden pegs dri"en into the ground; these really are to keep the artificially levell ed beds of mould, and the things in them, from being washed down into the river by the torrential wet season's rains. A ll sorts of things are'supposed by the gardener to grow in those beds, but Mme. Forget declares there is nothing but a sort of salad. I t is a very nice salad; I believe it to be dandelion, and there is plenty of it, and Mme. Forget might be more resigned about it; on the other hand , I agree with her, and quite fail to see why the gardener's salary should be continually raised, as he desires, nor exactly what bearing his abdominal afflictions have on the non-productiveness of the tomato plants, nor why, again , he should be paid more because of them, for curious abdominal s)-mptoms are very common among the whole of the 'Nest African tribes. My own opinion about that garden is that there are too many plantains in it, and too much shade. The whole station is surrounded by dense, dark-coloured, and forbidding-lookin g forest; in front of it runs the dark rapid ri"er, profoundly deep, but not more than 400 yards wide here; on the opposite side of it there is another hillside similarly forested, and unbroken by clearing, save in one little spot higher up than the mission, where there is a little native town and a small sub-factory of Hatton and Cookson's. Talagouga is grand, but its scenery is undoubtedly grim, and its name, signifying the gatew'ay of misery, seems applic- TALAGOUGA CHAP. able l It must be a melancholy place to li ve in, the very air lies hea vy and silent. I never saw the trees stirred by a breeze the whole time I was there, even the broad plant-ain leaves seemed to stand sleeping day out and day in, motion- less. This is because the mountains shelter it back and front; and on either side, promontories, running out from both banks, make a narrow winding gorge for the river channel. The only sign of motion you get is in the Ogowe; if you look at it you see, in spite of its dark quiet face, that it is sweeping pasn at a terrifi c pace. One great gray rock sticks up through it just below the mission beach, and from that lies ever a silver streak from the hindrance it g ives the current. E very now and again you will notice a canoe full of wild, naked, or nearly naked savages, silent because they a re Fans, and don't sing like Igalwas or M'pongwe when in canoes. They are either paddling very hard and creeping yery slowly upwards, against one of the banks, or just keeping her head straight and going rapidly down. Now and again you will hear the laboured beat of the engines of either the jV[ove or Edai1'e1t'" before you see the vessel and hear the warn ing shriek of their wh istles; and you can watch her as she comes up fighting her way to Njole, or see her as she comes down, slipping past liJ..;e a dream in a few seconds, and that is all. My first after- noon sufficed to allow of my seeing the station. M. J acot reports it to have thirty-two buildings on it, but he is a slave to truth, and counts all the cook-houses, &c. H ouses deserYing of the name there are but three-the Cacons', the girls' and the Forgets'. Mme. Forget took no end of care of me, and I look at my clean, t idy, comfortable room with terror, until I fi nd a built out bath-room wherein I shall be able to make all'ful messes with fish, &c., withou t disgracing myself and country; and joy inexpress ible ! "no mosquitoes," yet still curta in. I told you before I had heard they ended at 0 Soam6kita, but lI'hen I see people putting up mosquito-curtains over tl1ei1-b'eds I always have doubts; besides, along here you a lll'ays find people deny ha\·ing mosqu itoes, if they can, lI'ithout committing violent per- l Mr. R. B. N. \ ·Valker, 1 belien'!) holds this name is Otal a ma gouga: A gOllga=hardship, pri,·ation. VIII A GOOD WORD FOR THE FRENCH 157 jury; if they cannot deny it, as was the case with Mr. Cockshut at Lembarene, they try and turn the conversation or say other places are worse. Owing to this' bliss ful absence of irritation [ slept profoundly my first night at Talagouga, but roused by awful sounds in the morning-time, S.30-sit straight up ' in bed" one time." Ne\'er noticed mission had donkey yesterday, but they have, and it's off in an epileptic fit. As the sound ampli fies and continues a flash of reason succeeds this first impression. It's morning service in the church, and the natives are just s inging hymns. In after days the sound always produces the same physical shock, but the mental one dies out crushed under the weight of knowledge of the sound's origin. I spent my second day talking to Mme. Forget, whose English is perfectly good, although she tells me she resisted education most strenuously in tb is direction from patriotic motives. I must say I bow down and worship the spirit of patriotic fire in the French, not that I would imply for one moment that I, as an Englishwoman, suffered from it in Congo Fran~ais. They al"'ays ga\'e me the greatest help in getting about their territory and every kindness-of course there was no reason why they should not do so, for they have no reason to be anything but proud of the great things they have done here and the admirable way this noble province of theirs is administered. Congo Fran~ais is a very different thing to Congo Beige, a part of the world I shal l not wander into again until it becomes Congo Fran~ais, and that won't be long. I now salve my pride as an Engl ishwoman with the knowledge that were a Frenchwoman to travel in any of our "Vest Coast settlements, she would have as warm and helpful a welcome as [ get here, and I \vill be femininely spiteful , and say she would do more harm in the English settlements than ever I did in the French. Think of Mme. Jacot, Mme. Forget, or Mme. Gacon going into Calabar, for example, why there wouldn't be a whole heart left in the place in twenty-four hours! On the second day I spent at Talagouga I also made the acquaintance of Monsieur Pichon, a \'ery stately, homing, Antwerp pigeon ; his French feeling was a hopeless barrier to TALAGOUGA CHAP. a mutual friend shi p arising between us. admire him sincerely . His personal appearance, his grand manner, the regular way in which he orders his life, going down regularly on to one particular stone at the river's brink to make his toi let; attending every meal du ring the day; and going to roost on one particular door-top, commands admiration and respect. But to me he behaved cruelly. He bullied me out of food at meal times, always winding up wi th a fight, holding on to my finger with his beak like a vice. I know he regards me as a defeated slave and took as mere due service my many rescues of him from behind a mirror, which hu ng tilted from the wall and behind which he used constantly to fall, dazz led by the vision of hi s own beauty as he flew up in front of the glass. There is another low-down pigeon domesticated at Talagouga, but he was a nobody, and Monsieur let him know it, in spite of several rebell ions on his part. A nd there were also two very small, very black kittens which were being carefully, but alas unavai lingly nu rsed, for their mother had abandoned them. M. F orget did not thin k I should have much chance of getting fi sh for specimens, because he said, although the Fans catch plenty, they do not care to sell them, as they are the main article of food in this foodless region, still he would try and persuade them to bring them to me, and so success- ful were his efforts that that afternoon several Fans turned lip with specimens. For these I gave, as usual when opening a trade in a district, fancy p ri ces, a ruse that proved so successful here that I was soon at my wits' end for bottles and sp irit-trade gin I migh t have got, but there is not sufficient alcohol in trade gin to preserve spec imens in. Again M. Forget came to the rescue and let me have a bottle of alcohol out of the dispensary. I got a fearful fright during my second night at T a lagouga. I went to bed quite lulled into a sense Q[ secujty by the mosquitolessness of the p revious night. I \Vasaroused be- tween 2 and 3 o'clock A .M. by acute pain from punctured wounds on the chest and the mosquito curtain completely down and smothering me. My first fear ",as that I had brought a mosquito or so of the Lembarene strain up to \"111 A DISTURBED N IGHT 159 ------------------- Talagouga with me, who had just recovered from the journey and were having their evening meal. I fought my "layout of the mosquito-curtain and trod- on a cold flabby thing which kindly said" Croak "-introducing itself as a harmless frog, and dispelling fear number two, namely that it was a snake. I then had a sporting hunt for matches in the inky dark-upset half the room before I found them, but when this was done, and I got the candle alight, I found a big black cat sitting smiling on m y bed, and conjecturing she was the bereaved mother of those afflicted, deserted, kittens, I got her off, and tied up the mosquito-bar to the ceiling again, and then took her in with me under it to finish my night's rest; for I feared if I left her outside she \I'ould cause another tender awakening of memories of those Lembarene mosquitoes. The frog, having got hi s wind again, flip -flapped about the floor all night, croak, croak- ing to his outdoor relations about the unprovoked outrage that had been committed on him. I spent the succeeding days in buy ing fi sh from the natives, who brought it in quantities, mostly of two sorts, and of course wanted enormous prices for it ; but I confess I rather enjoy the give-and-take fun o f bartering against their extor- tion, and my trading with them introduced us to each other so that when we met in the course of the long climbing walks I used to take beetle-hunting in the bush behind the miss ion station, we knew about each other, and did not get much shocked or frighten ed. That forest round T alagouga was one of the most difficult bits of country to get a bout in I ever came across, for it was dense and there were no bush paths. I 0 Fan village wan ts to walk to another Fan village fN social civilities, and all their trade goes up and down the ri ver in canoes. No doubt some miles inland there are bush paths, but I never struck one, so they must be pretty far away. N either did I come across any Tillages in the forest, they seem all to be on the river bank round here. The views from the summits of the abruptly shaped hill s round Talagouga are exceed ingly grand, and give one a good idea of the trend of the Sierra del Crista I range in this district; to the east, the higher portions of the ranges sholVed, just 160 T.'\LAGOUGA CH.\P. beyond Njole, a closely set series of strangely shaped sum- mits beautifully purple-blue, running away indefinitely to the N.N.W. and S.E.; and when the day was clear, one could see the mountains of Achangoland away to the S.S.E., from their shape evidently the same formation, but not following the same direction as the range of the Sierra del Crista!. The hills I had personally to deal with ,,·ere western flanking hills of the Sierra-all masses of hard black rock with veins and blocks of crystalline quartz. Between the interstices of the rocks, was the rich vegetable mould made by hundreds of thousands of years of falling lea,·es and timber. The under- growth was very dense and tangled among the great gray- white columns of the high trees; the young shoots of this undergrowth were interesting, not so often rose-coloured as those round Lembarene, but usually in the denser parts a pale creamy-white, or a deep blue. I was fool enough to fancy that a soft, delicate-leaved, white-shoot-bearing plant had, on its own account, a most fragrant scent, but I soon found the scent came from the civet cats, which abound here, and seem to affect this shrub particularly. It is ,"ery quaint the intense aversion the Africans ha,"e to this scent, and the grimaces and spitting that goes on when they come across it; their aversion is shared by the elephants. I once;: saw an elephant put his trun k against one of these scented bushes, ha,"e it up in a second, and fly off into the forest with an Oh lor! burn- some-brown-paper! pocket-hand kerchief-please expression all over him" The nati,"es, knowing this, use ci,"et in hunting elephants, as I will some day describe. The high trees ""ere of ,"arious kinds-acacias, red-,,"ood, African oak, a little ebony, and odeaka, and many other kinds I know not e,"en the native names of to this day. One which I know well by sight gi,"es, when cut, a vividly yellow wood of great beauty. Now and again on exposed parts of the hillside, one comes across great fa ll s of t imber which ha,"e been thrown do,,"n by tornadoes either flat on to the ground-in which cilse-trffder and among them are snakes and scorpions, and getting o,"er them is slippery work; or thrown sideways and hanging against their fellows, all covered with gorgeous drapery of climbing, flO\\"er- ing plants-in which case they present to the human atom VIII SNAKES IN A CLEFT STICK 161 ------------------------- a wall made up of strong tendrils and climbing grasses. through which the said atom has to cut its way with a matchette and push into the crack so made. getting. the while covered with red driver-ants. and such like. and having sensa- tional meetings with blue-green snakes. dirty green snakes with triangular horned heads. black cobras. and boa constrictors. I never came back to the station without having been frightened half out of my wits, and with one or two of my smaller terrifiers in cleft sticks to bottle. '''!hen you get into the way. catching a snake in a cleft stick is perfectly simple. Only mind you have the proper kind of stick, split far enough up, and keep your attention on the snake's head, that's his business end. and the tail which is whisking and winding round your wrist does not matter: there was one snake, by the way, of which it was impossible to tell, in the forest , which was his head. The natives swear he has one at each end; so you had better " Lef 'em." e\'en though you know the British Museum would 10\'e to have him, for he is very venomous, and one of the few cases of death from snake-bite I have seen, was from this species. Several times, when further in the forest, I came across a trail of flattened undergrowth, for fifty or sixty yards, with a horrid musky smell that demonstrated it had been the path of a boa' constrictor, and nothing more. It gave me more trouble and terror to get to the top of . those Talagouga hillsides than it gave me to go twenty miles 'in the forests of Old Calabar. and that is saying a good deal. but when you got to the summit there was the glorious view of the rest of the mountains. stretching away, interrupted onl y by Mount Talagouga to the S.E. by E. and the great. grim. dark forest, under the lowering gray sky, common during the dry season on the Equator. No glimpse or hint did one have of the Ogowe up here, so deep down in its ravine does it fl ow. A person coming to the hill tops close to Talagouga from the N. or N.N.'''!. and turning back in his track from here might be utterly unconscious that one of the great rivers of the world was flowing, full and strong. within some 800 feet of him. There is a strange sense of secretiveness about· all these 'Nest African forests; but I never saw it so marked as in these th",t M TALAGOUGA CHAP. shroud the Sierra del Crista!. I very rarely met any natives in this part; those that I did were hunters, big, lithe men with all their toilet attention concentrated on their hair. On two occasions I ran some risk from having been stalked in mistake for game by these hunters. " Hoots toots, mon, a verra pretty thing it would hae been for an Englishwoman to hae been shot in mistake for a gorilla by a cannibal Fan of all folks," was a Scotch friend's commentary. I escaped, how- ever, because these men get as close as they can to their prey before firing; and when they found out their mistake they were not such cockney sportsmen as to kill me because I was something queer, and we stood and stared at each other, said a few words in our respective languages, and parted. One thing that struck me very much in these forests was the absence of signs of feti sh worship which are so much in evidence in Calabar, where you constantly come across trees worshipped as the residences of spirits, and little huts put up over offerings to bush souls. Thanks to the kindness of M. Forget, I had an opportunity of visiting Talagouga Island-a grant of which has been made by the French ,Government to the Mission Evangelique, who, owing to the inconveniences of being hitched precariously on a hillside, intend shortly removing from their present situation, and settling on the is land. Talagouga Island is situated in the middle of the river, about halfway between the present mission beach and Njole. It is a mile long and ave rages about a quarter of a mile wide; the up-ri ver end of it is a rocky low hill, and it tapers down river from this, ending in a pretty little white sandbank. A t the upper end there is a reef of black rocks against which the Ogowe strikes, its brown face turning white with agitation at being interrupted, when it is in such a tearing hurry to get to the South Atlantic. \Nhen going up river to it in a canoe, creeping up along by the b1' ''11'''''(' 111', Il fJ\v'JVC,', 'lr l';rld1l'd bUI ",.(e:: WC WJI to Ihr tlPIIl'" (' ,HI ; ,I/l,f M, Jlorl rcl w,'nl off II) He" " ftur til .. f}r ': III ~~I', IirrH't IJHII ;II1 :L, IllId pl;H1l:.dn tn..:c,-: th :ll had been pl."II",f 0" Ih, ' tll'pc" ",,,I "f L1w iHI,,"d wlll'l'(; Ihe:: ,niHH i')I' 11111" 11"1 """ III 1)(, btlill. I w,[nri (; l'( ,d "b'lllt Hednf!, Ihi",.;", 1I111t/lr l~ (Jth( ' n~ : 111 f" lwa nqJIJlc'nt uf' 1" :1.11 4 \V hf) arc c utling' down Ih(' Ii""",,, I" ,,,,,I,,, ,'II'IIr1 (')" IIII' J,uildi" l.;, which iH 'H)t y e::t 111111111 ' 111 ( ~d ; nllfl 1j l}mc WfJll ri ·"rullil'Y ba,yl'I in tlK' bank,aJf)11g' Ille 11I 11I1 11( "'II I1 ,dl ' , whot' lh L: CUI"'C l1t iN Il:HH ', LI' ()j! ff" 0 1' l' a.thul', I ',UI'I" """ e1,· rl er ll·" "1~"i" '1 1 Ih" ,,,,,i,",,n,1 1)l(nl< by Ihe rI.Jck "I'd '1'1" ,,", l'ilY" ~ I/'" nlle,l ill Ihe 1I,'y """"0" by b"nb of wldl<' ,,, ",,f ill whi, h ,H IJtLl'kl,' (""v. "I (; "L" o( Inic", ,wri \Vh'll YUII wall~ 1111 1111'111 lIwy g- iv(.:: flul a I11UHir :d , :-Iurt hUIll in t~ q t l ': I II J~ ( ' Wi ly, 1\ t)llrfll'tllllnlcl y," M. FOl'g ('t Ha y~ , !'In (ar 110 ~l l}l ' itr l~ w: d " ,' hll'.! 1)1'(,; 11 (f 11l1ld fl ll lh. , i'l1.uld , ' ''lay 11l1fcJj' tlll1 - ,11t'1 ), i ll nlll l' ~ fi r 'IlIfll :ILiflll :t4 I rll) Ilflt : l r ~ n.. . T with hill1 that till .. 11 1(' 11(1 ' ( II !' lll'it !~: w: Il t: I' j"'l a IlIi ~ ffjl'llltH' , bllt I'q,.!':lI'd it : l ~ 11 1,l p !ot titl ~~ ill rli 4 f~I Ii "l { ·. ~n' , I I/ Ill )' way fl f Ih i ldd llg', th ~' () ~()w 6 \V, ltl ' I , (' X I Hiql,rI t o lIw :d,', w ilh it " I.nv ift (tll 'I'( ' nl , i ... Sit~ ' 1 ~ tllri tIl d"I'lk lll l ll1 r/,'((I( I I' I/ tr' f l f ll'('rfl l r) '! I'till ~: H all ' i', I m eal1. W ldlf ' WI ' f lt' ( ' W: dtill ~ : rIll ' til(' 1' (' tlll ' l1 (Ir t i ll ' c allo\..; which 11 : I '~ 1~ 11t1 { ' 1/1 till' tll : tilil ll1ld If) d c pllt'd l :lll 1': \'.lIIg'c li "l ( in u. vilI IW,(', M , Itql'w' l l lit'! II Pl l1 :IVI' I' with til(' Fat1 !-1 . who n,I'c vC l'y ,,,,, ,,, I), " "" " i" f: I" " 11\'(;" ("'"'' li1(' lVhen the sun shines on them they have a soft light blue haze round them, like a halo. The effect produced by this, with the forested hillsides and the little beaches of glistening ,,-hite sand was one of the most perfect things I have ever seen. \>Ve kept a long close to the right-hand bank, dodging out of the way of the swiftest current as much as possible. Ever and agai n we were unable to force our way round projecting parts of the bank, so we then got up just as far as we could to the IX COLLAR WORK point in question, yelling and shouting at the tops of our voices. M'bo said "Jump for bank, sar," and I "up and jumped," followed by half the crew. Such banks! sheets, and walls, and rubbish heaps of rock, mixed up with trees fallen and standing. One appalling corner I shall not forget, for I had to jump at a rock wall, and hang on to it in a manner more befitting an insect than an insect-hunter, and then scramble up it into a close-set forest, heavily burdened with boulders of all sizes. I wonder whether the rocks or the trees were there first? there is evidence both ways, for in one place you will see a rock on the top of a tree, the tree creeping out from underneath it, and in another place you will see a tree on the top of a rock, clasping it with a network of roots and getting its nourishment, goodness knows how, for these are by no means tender, digestible sand- stones, but uncommon hard gneiss and quartz which has no idea of breaking up into friable small stuff, and which only takes on a high polish when it is vigorously sanded and canvassed by the Ogowe. While I was engaged in climbing across these promontories, the crew would be busy shouting and hauling the canoe round the point by means of the strong chain pro- vided for such emergencies fixed on to the bow. When this was done, in we got again and paddled away until we met our next affliction. M'bo had advised that we should spend our first night at the" same village that M. Allegret did: but when we reached it, a large village on the north bank, we seemed to have a lot of daylight still in hand, and thought it would be better to stay at one a little higher up, so as to make a shorter day's work for to-morrow, when we wanted to reach Kondo Kondo; so we went against the bank just to ask about the situation and character of the up-river villages. The row of low, bark huts warlong, and extended its main frontage close to the edge of the river bank. The inhabitants had been watching us as we came, and when they saw we intended calling that afternoon, they charged down to the river· edge hopeful of excitement. They had a great deal to say, and so had we. After compli- ments, as they say, in excerpts of diplomatic communications, three of their men took charge of the conversation on their side, and M'bo did ours. To M'bo's questions they gave a THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE CHAP. dramatic entertainment as answer, after the manner of these brisk, excitable Fans. One chief, however, soon settled down to definite details, prefacing his remarks with the silence- commanding" Azuna! Azuna!" and his companions grunted approbation of his observations. He took a piece of plantain leaf and tore it up into five different-sized bits. These he laid along the edge of our canoe at different intervals of space, while he told M'bo things, mainly scandalous, about the characters of the villages these bits of leaf represented, save of course about bit A, which represented his own. The in- ten'al between the bits ,,'as proportional to the interval between the vill ages, and the size of the bits was- pro- portional to the size of the village. Village number four was the only one he should recommend our going to. "Vhen all was said, I gave our kindly informants some heads of tobacco and many thanks. Then M'bo sang them a hymn, with the assistance of Pierre, half a line behind him in a different key, but every bit as Rat. The Fans seemed impressed, but any crowd would be by the hymn-singing of my crew, unless they were inmates of deaf and dumb asylums. Then we took our farewell,and thanked the village elaborately for its kind in vitation to spend the night there on our "'ay home, shoved off and paddled away in grea't style just to show those Fans what Igalwas could do, \lYe hadn 't gone 200 yards before we met a current coming round the end of a rock reef that was too strong for us to hold our own in, let alone progress. On to the bank I was ordered and went; it was a low sl ip of rugged confused boulders and fragments of rocks, carelessly arranged, and e\' idently under water in the wet season. I scrambled along, the men yelled and shouted and hauled the canoe, and the inhabitants of the \· illage, seeing we were becom ing amus- ing again, came, legging it like lamp-lighters, after us, young and old, male and female, to say nothing of the dogs. Some good souls helped the men haul, while I d id my best to amuse the others by diving headlong from a large rock on to which I had elaborately climbed, into a thick clump of willow-leaved shrubs. They applauded my performance vociferously, and then assisted my efforts to extricate my- IX A LOVELY AFTERGLOW 171 self, and during the rest of my scramble they kept close to me, with keen competition for the front roll', in hopes that I ,,'ould do something like it again, But I refused the eneon, because, bashful as I am, I could not but feel that my last performance was carried out with all the superb reckless abandon of a Sarah Bernhardt, and a display of art of this order should satisfy any African village for a year at least. At last I got across the rocks on to a lovely little beach of "'hite sand, and stood there talking, surrounded by my audience, until the canoe got over its difficulties and arrived almost as scratched as I ; and then we again said fare,, 'ell and paddled away, to the great grief of the natives, for they don't get a circus up above N jole every week, poor dears, Now there is no doubt that that chief's plantain - leaf chart was an ingenious idea and a credit to him, There is also no doubt that the Fan mile is a bit Irish, a matter of nine or so of those of ord inary mortals, but I am bound to say I don't think, even allowing for this, that he put those pieces far enough apart. On we paddled a long way befo re we picked up village number one, mentioned in that chart, On again, stil1 longer, till ,,'e came to village number two, Village number three hove in sight high up on a mounta in s ide soon after, but it was getting dark and the water worse, ancl the hill- sides growing higher and higher into nobly shaped mountains, forming, with their forest-graced steep sides, a ravine that, in the gathering gloom, looked like an alley-way made of iron, for the foaming Ogowe, Village number four we anxiously looked for; village number four we never saw; for round us came the dark, seeming to come out on to the ri,'er from the forests and tie side ravines, where for some hours we had seen it sle;ping, like a sailor with his clothes on in bad ,,'eather. On we paddled, looking for signs of village fires, and seeing them not. The El'd-geist knew we wanted something, and seeing how we personally lacked it, thought it was beauty ; and being in a kindly mood, gave it li S, sending the 100'ely lingering flu shes of his afterglow across the sky, which, dying, left it that divine deep purple velvet which no one has dared to paint. Out in it came the great stars blazing high above liS, and the dark rOllnd us was be-gemmed with fire-flies: but THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE CHAP. we were not as satisfied with these things as we should have been; what we wanted were fires to c~ok by and dry our- selves by, and all that sort of thing. The Erd-geist did not understand, and so left us when the afterglow had d ied away, with only enough starl ight to see the flying foam of the rapids ahead and around us, and not enough to see the g reat trees that had fallen from the bank into the water. These, when the rapids were not too noisy, we could listen for, because the; black current rushes through their branches with an impatient CI li sh, swish n; but when there was a rapid roaring close a longside we ran into those trees, and got our- selves mauled, and had t icklish t imes getting on our course aga in. Now and again we ran up against great rocks sticking up in the black water-grim, isolated fellows, who seemed to be standing silently watching their fellow rocks noi sily fight - ing in the arena of the white water. Still on we poled and paddled. About 8 P.M. we came to a corner, a bad one; but we were unable to leap on to the bank and hau l round, not being able to see either the details or the exact position of the said bank, and ,,·e felt, I think naturally, di sinclined to spring in the direction of such bits of country as we had had ex- perience of during the afternoon, with nothing but the aid we might have got from a com pass hastil y viewed by the transitory light of a lucifer match, and even this ,,·ould not have informed us how many tens of feet of tree fringe lay be- tween us and the land, so we did not attempt it. One must be careful at times, or nasty accidents may folio,,·. \Ve fought our way rou nd that corner, yelli ng defiance at the water, and dealt with succeed ing corners on til e vi et armis plan, breaking, ever and anOIl ,a pole. A bout 9.30we got in to a sa\"age rapid . .\ ,Ve fou ght it inch by inch. The canoe jammed herself on some ba rely sunken rocks in it. Vie shoved her off OI·er them. She ti lted over and chucked us out. The rocks round being just awash, we surv ived and got her straight again, and got into her and drove her unmercifully; she struck again and bucked like a broncho, and we fell in heaps upon each other, but stayed ins ide that time-the men by the aid of thei r in telligent feet, I by clinching my hands in to the bush rope lacing which ran round the rim of the canoe and the meaning of IX r A RUSH DOW;-'; STREAM 173 which I did not understand when I left Talagouga. vVe sorted ourselves out hasti ly and sent her at it again. Smash ,,·ent a sorely tried pole and a paddle. Round and round we spun in an exultant whirlpool, which, in a li ght-hearted , maliciously joking way, hurled us tail first out of it into the current. Now the grand point in these canoes of having both ends alike declared itsel f; for at this juncture all we had to do was to re,·oh·e on our own axis and commence Ii fe anew with what had been the bow for the stern. Of course we ,,·ere defeated, we could not go up any further without the aid of our lost poles and paddles, so we had to go down for shelter some,,·here, anywhere, and down at a terrific pace in the white water we went. vVhile hi tched among the rocks the arrangement of our crew had been altered, Pierre joining M'bo in the bows; th is piece of precaution was frustrated by our getting turned round; so our position was what you might call precarious, until we got into another whirlpool, when we persuaded nature to sta rt us right end on. This was only a matter of minutes, whi rlpools being plentiful, and then M'bo and Pierre, provided ,,·ith our surviving poles, stood in the bows to fend us off rocks, as we shot towards them; while we midship paddles sat, hel ping to steer, and when occasion a rose, which occasion did with lightning rapidity, to whack the whirlpools with the flat of ou r paddles, to break their force. Cook crouched in the stern concentrating his mind on stee ring only. A most excellent arrangement in theory and the safest practical one no doubt, but it did not work out what you might call brilliantly well; though each department did its best. We dashed full tilt towards high rocks, things twenty to fifty feet above water. Midship backed and fl apped like fury: M'bo jnd Pierre received the shock on their poles; sometimes we~lanced successfully aside and flew on; sometimes we didn't. The shock being too much for M'bo and Pierre they were driyen back on me, who got flattened on to the cargo of bundles which, being now firmly tied in, couldn't sp read the confusion further aft; but the shock of the canoe's nose against the rock did so in style, and the rest of the crew fell forward on to the bundles, me, and themselves. So shaken up together were we several times that night, that it's a wonder 174 THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE CHAP. to me, considering the hurry, that we sorted ourselves out correctly with our own particular legs and arms. And although we in the middle "f the canoe did some very spirited flapping, our whirlpool-breaking was no more successful than M'bo and Pierre's fending off, and many a wil'd waltz we danced that night with the waters of the River Ogowe. Unpleasant as going through the rapids was, when circum- stances took us into the black current we fared no better. For good all -round incon venience, give me going full tilt in the dark into the branches of a fallen tree at the pace we were going then-and crash, swish, crackle and there you are, hung up, with a bough pressing against your chest, and your hair being torn out and your clothes ribboned by others, while the wicked river is trying to drag away the canoe from under you. I expect we should have been an amusing spectacle for hard -hearted onlookers; but onlookers there were none, neither could we form a co-operati,'e society for consuming our own ridiculousness as we did when we had light to see it by, After a good hour and more of these experiences, we went hard on to a large black reef of rocks So firm was the canoe wedged that we in our rather ,,'om-out state couldn 't move her so we wisely decided to "lef 'em" and see what could be done towards getting food and a fire for the remainder of the night. Our eyes, now trained to the darkness, observed pretty clos€ to us a big lump of land, looming up out of the river. This we subsequently found out was Kembe Island, The rocks and foam on either side stretched away into the darkness, and high above us against the star-lit sky stood out clearly the summits of the mountains of the Sierra del CristaL T he most interesting question to us now ,,'as whether this rock reef commun icated suffic iently with the island for us to get to it. Abandoning conjecture; tying ,'ery firmly our canoe up to the rocks, a thing that seemed, considering she was jammed hard and immo,'able, a little unnecessary-but you can never be sufficiently ca reful in this matter with any kind of boat-off we started among the rock boulders, j would cl imb up on to a rock table, fall off it on the other sid", IX WE REACH A VILLAGE on to rocks again) with Inore or less water on them-then get a patch of singing sand under my feet, then with vary ing suddenness get into more water, deep or shallow, broad or narrow pools among the rocks; out of that over more rocks, &c., &c., &c.: my companions, from their noises, e,·idently were going in for the same kind of thing, but we were quite cheerful, because the probability of reach ing the land seemed increasing. Most of us arrived into deep channels of water which here and there cut in between this rock reef and the bank M'bo was the first to find the way into certainty; he was, and I hope still is, a perfect wonder at this sort of work. I kept close to M'bo, and when we got to the shore, the rest of the wanderers being collected, we sa id "chances are there's a village round here" ; and started to find it. After a gay time · in a rock-encumbered forest, g rowing in a tangled, matted way on a rough hillside, at an angle of 45 degrees, i\1'bo sighted the gleam of fires through the tree stems away to the left, and we bore down on it, listening to its drum. Viewed through the bars of the tree stems the scene was very picturesque. The village was just a collection of palm mat-built huts very low and squalid. In its tiny street, an affair of some sixty feet long and twenty wide, were a succession of small fires. The vi ll agers themselves, however, were the stri king features in the picture. They were painted verm ilion all ove, their nearly naked bodies, and were dancing enthusiastically to the good old rump-a-tump-tump-tump tune, played ener- g etically by an old gentleman on a long, high-standing, white- and-black painted drum. They said that as they had been dancing when we a rrived they had failed to hear us. M'bo secure1 a-well, I don't exactly know what to call it-for my use. )t was, I fancy, the remains of the village club-house. It M d a certain amount of palm-thatch roof and some of Its left-hand side left, the rest of the structure was bare old poles with. filaments of palm mat hanging from them here and there; and really if it hadn't been for the roof one wouldn't have known whether one was inside or outside it. The floor was trodden earth and in the middle of it a heap of white ash and the usual two bush lights, laid down with their burning ends ~ropped up off the ground with stones, and emitting, as is THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE CHAP. their wont, a rather mawkish, but not altogether un- pleasant smell , and volumes of smoke which finds its way out through the thatch, leaving on the inside of it a rich oily varn ish of a bright warm brown colour. They give a very good light, provided some one keeps an eye on them and knocks the ash off the end as it burns gray; the bush lights' idea of being snuffed. Against one of the open- work sides hung a drum covered with raw hide, and a long hollow bit of tree trunk, which served as a cupboard for a few small articles. I gathered in all these details as I sat on one of the hard wood benches, waiting for my dinner, which Isaac was preparing outside in the street. The atmosphere of the hut, in spite of its remarkable advantages in the way of venti - lation, was oppressive, for the smell of the bush lights, my wet clothes, and the nati ves who crowded into the hut to look at me, made any thing but a pleasant combination. The people were evidently exceedingly poor; clothes they had very little of. The two head men had on old French military coats in rags; but they were quite satisfied with their appearance, and evidently felt through them in touch with European culture, for they lectured to the 0thers on the habits and customs of the white man with great self-confidence and superiority. The majority of the village had a slight acquaintance already with this interesting animal, being, I found, Adoomas. They had made a settlement on Kembe I sland some two years or so ago. Then the Fans came and attacked them, and killed and ate several. The Adoomas left and fled to the French authority at Njole and remained under its guarding shadow until the French came up and chastised the Fans and burnt their Yill age; and the Adoomas- ,,,hen things had quieted down again and the Fans had gone off to build themselves a new village for their burnt one-came bac k to Kembe Island and the ir plantain patch. They had onl y done this a few months before my arri val and had not had time to rebuild, hence the dilapidated state of the village. They are, I am told, a Congo region tribe, whose country lies south-west of France"ille, and, as I have already said, are the tribe used by the French authoriti es to take convoys up and down the Ogow6 to France- I X A ~IGHT SCE;'!E 1 i7 ville, more to keep this route open than for transport purposes; the rapids rendering it impracticable to take heavy sto res this way, and making it a th irty -six days' journey from Njo le with good luck. The practical route is via Loango and Brazzaville. The Adoomas told us the convoy ,,·hich had gone up with the yivacious government official hqd had trouble with the rapids and had spent five days on Kondo Kondo, dragg ing up the canoes empty by means of ropes and chains, carrying the cargo that was in them along on land until they had passed the worst rapid and then repacking. They added the information that the rapids were at their worst just now, and entertained us with reminiscences of a poor young French official who had been drowned in them last year-indeed they were just as cheering as my white friends. As soon as my dinner arrived they politely cleared out, and I heard the devout M'bo holding a service for them, with hymns, in the st reet, and this being m·er they returned to their drum and dance, keeping things up distinctly late, for it was I l. IO P .iIl. , when we first en tered the vi Ilage. "Whi le the men were getting their food mounted guard over our little possessions, and when they turned up to make things tidy in my hut, I walked off down to the shore by a path, which we had elaborately avoided when coming to the vi ll age, a very vertically iflcl ined, slippery little path, but still the one whereby the natives went up and down to their canoes, which ,,"ere kept tied up amongst the rocks. The moon was rising, illumining the sky, but not yet sending down her li ght on the foaming, flying Ogmn' in its deep ravine. The scene was divinely lovely; on every side out of the formless) gloom rose the peaks of the Sierra del Crista!. Toma')Jawki, on the further side of the ri,'er surrounded by his ct>mpanion peaks, looked his grandest, silhouetted hard against the sky. In the higher valleys where the dim light shone faintly, one could see wreaths and clouds of si lver-gray mist lying, basking lazily or rolling to and fro. Olangi seemed to stretch right across the river, blocking with h is great blunt mass all passage; while away to the N.E. a cone- shaped peak showed conspicuous, wh ich I afterwards knew as Kang,,"e. In the darkness round me flitted thousands of fire- N THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOwt CHAP. fli es and out beyond this pool of utter night fl ew by unceas- ing ly the white foam of the rapids; sound there was none sa ve their thunder. The majesty and beauty of the scene fascinated me, a nd I stood leaning with my back against a rock pinnacle watching it. Do not imagine it gave rise, in what I am pleased to call my mind , to those complicated, poetical reflections natural beauty seems to bring out in other people's minds. It never works that way with me; I just lose a ll sense of human individuality, all memory of human life, with its g rief and WOlTY and doubt, and become part of the atmosphere. If I have a heaven, that will be mine, a nd I verily believe that if I ,,·ere left a lone long enough with such a scene as this or on the deck of an A frican liner in the Bights, watching her funnel a nd masts swinging to and fro in the great long leisu rely roll against the sky, I should be found sou lless and dead; but I never have a chance of that. This night my absent Kras, as my Fanti fri ends would call them, were sent hurrying home badly scared to their attributi,·e body by a fear ful shriek tearin g through the ,·oice of the Ogowe up into the silence of the hill s. I woke with a shudder and found myself sore and stiff, but made hastily in the direction of the shriek, fancying some of ou r hosts had been spea ring one of the crew-a vain and foolish fancy I apo logise for. \iVhat had happened was that my men, thinking it wiser to keep an eye on our canoe, had come down and built a fire close to her a nd put up their mosquito-bars as tents. One of the men, tired out by h is day's work, had sat down on one of the three logs, whose ends, pointed to a common centre where the fire is, constitute the universa l stove of this region. H e was taking a last pipe before turning in, but sleep had taken him, and the wretch of a fire had sneaked along in the log under him and burnt him suddenly. The shriek was his way of mentioning the fact. H aving got up t hese facts I left the victim seated in a remed ial cool pool of water and climbed back to the ,·illage, whose inhabitants, tired at last, were going to sleep. M'bo, I found, had hung up my mosquito-bar over one of the hard wood benches, and gotflg cautiously under it I lit a night-light and read myself as leep with my damp dilapidated old Horace. IX UP STREAM AGAIN 179 \Voke at 4 _\ ., 1. lying on the ground among the plantain stems, ha" ing by a reckless movement fallen out of the house. Thanks be there a re no m0squitoes. I don't know how I escaped the rats which swarm here, running about among the huts and the inhabitants in the evening, with a tameness shocking to see. I turned in again until six o'clock, when we started getting things ready to go up river again, carefully providing ourselves " 'ith a new stock of poles, and subsidis ing a native to come with us and help us to fi ght the rapids. The greatest breadth of the river channel we now saw, in the daylight, to be the S.S.vV. branch ; this was the one we had been swept into, and was almost completely barred by rock The other one to the N.N.W. was more open, and the ri,'er rushed through it, a terrific, swirling mass of water. Had we got caught in this, we should have got past Kembe Island; and gone to glory. Whenever the shelter of the spits ofland or of the reefs was suffi cient to allow the water to lay down its sand, strange shaped sandbanks showed, as regular in form as if they had been smoothed by human hands. They rise above the water in a slope, the low end or tail against the current; the down-stream end terminating in an abrupt miniature cliff, sometimes six and seven feet above the water ; that they are the same shape when they have not got their heads above water you will find by sticking on them in a canoe, which r did several times, with a sort of automatic devotion to scientifi c research peculiar to me. Your best way of getting off is to push on in t he direction of the current, carefully preparing for the shock of suddenly coming off the cliff end. We left the landing place rocks of Kembe Island about 8, and no sooner had we got afloat, than, in the twin kling of an eye, we were swept, broadside on, right across the ri ver to the north bank, and then engaged in a heavy fight wi th a severe rapid. After passing this, the river is fairly un- in terrupted by rock for a while, and is silent and swift. When you are ascend ing such a piece the effect is strange; you see the water fly ing by the side of your canoe, as you vigorously dri ve your paddle into it with short rap id strokes, and you forth with fancy you a re travelling at the rate of a North- \Vestern express; but you just raise your eyes, my friend, and N 2 180 THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE CHAP. ---------- look at that bank, which is standing very nearly still, and you will realise that you and your canoe a re standing \-ery nearly still too; and that all your exertions are only enabling you to creep on at the pace of a crushed snail, and that it's the water that is going the pace. It's a most quaint and unpleasant dis- illusionment. Above the stretch of swift silent water we come to the Sengelade Islands, and the river here changes its course from N.N.W., S.s.E. to north and south. A bad rapid, called by our al ly from Kembe Island "Unfanga," being surmounted, we seem to be in a mountain-walled lake, and keeping along the left bank of this, we get on famously for twenty whole restful minutes, which lulls us all into a false sense of security, and m y crew s ing M'pongwe songs, descrip- tive of how they go to their homes to see their wi\-es, and families, and friends, giving chaffing descriptions of their friends' characteristics and of their failings, which cause bursts of laughter from those among us who recognise the allusions, and how they go to their boxes, and take out their clothes, and put them on-a long bragging inventory of these things is given by each man as a solo, and then the chorus, taken heartily up by his companions, signifies their admiration and astonish- ment at his wealth and importance-and then they sing how, being dissatisfied with that last dollar's worth of goods they got from " Holty's," they have decided to take their next trade to Hatton and Cookson, or vice versa; and then comes the chorus, applauding the wisdom of such a decision, and e.'(tol - ling the excellence of Hatton and Cookson's goods or Holty's_ These M'pongwe and I galwa boat songs are all very pretty, and have very elaborate tunes in a minor key. I do not belie\·e there are any old words to them; I have tried hard to find out about them, but I believe the tunes, \\"hich are of a limited num- ber and quite distinct from each other, are very old. The ,,-ords are put in by the singer on the spur of the moment, and only restricted in this sense, that there would ah,-ays be the domestic catalogue-whatever its component details might be-suI).g to the one fixed tune, the trade information sung to --anc;ther, and so on. A good singer, in these parts, means the man who can make lip the best song-the most impressi\·e, or the most lX A MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT amusing; I ha,·e elsewhere mentioned prett)' much the same state of things among the Ga's and Krumen and Bubi, and in all cases the tunes are only voice tunes, not for instrumental performance. The instrumental music consists of that marvel- lously developed series of drum tunes-the attempt to under- stand which has taken up much of my time, and led me into queer company-and the many tunes played on the 'mrimba and the orchid-root-stringed harp: they are, I believe, entirely distinct from the song tunes. And these peaceful tunes my SOUT H BANK OF THE OGOWE RIVER NEAR SE:\'GELADE ISLANDS_ men \\-ere now singing \\-ere, in their florid elaboration very differen t from the one they fought the rapids to, of-So Sir- So Sur-So Sir-So Sur-Ush! So Sir, &c. On we go singing elaborately, thinking no evi l of nature, when a current, a quiet devil of a thing, comes round from behind a point of the bank and catches the nose of our canoe; wringing it well, it sends us scuttl ing right across the ri ver in spite of our feroci ous s\Voops at the water, upsetting us among a lot of rocks with the water boiling over them; thi s lot of THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOwt CHAP. rocks being however of the table-top kind, and not those precious, close-set pinnacles rising up sheer out of profound depths, between which you are so likely to get your canoe wedged in and split. We, up to our knees in water that nearly tears our legs off, push and shove the canoe free, and fe-embarking return singing (( So Sir" across the river, to have it out with that current. \Ve do; and at its head find a rapid, and notice on the mountain-side a village clearing, the first sign of human habitation we have seen to-day. Above this rapid we get a treat of still water, the main current of the Ogowe flying along by the south bank. On our side there are sandbanks with their graceful sloping backs and sudden ends, and there is a very strange and beautiful effect produced by the flakes and balls of foam thrown off the rushing main current into the quiet water. These whirl among the eddies and rush backwards and forwards as though they were still mad wi th \vild haste, until, finding no current to take them down, they drift away into the land- lo~ked bays, where they come to a standstill as if they were bewildered and lost and were trying to remember where they were going to and whence they had come; the foam of which they are composed is yellowish-white, with a spongy sort of so lidity about it. In a littl e bay we pass we see eight native women, Fans clearly, by their bright brown faces, and their loads of brass bracelets and armlets; likely enough they had anklets too, but we could not see them, as the good ladies were pottering about waist-deep in the foam-flecked "'ater, intent on breaking up a stockaded fi sh-trap. vVe pause and chat, and watch them collecting the fish in baskets. ancl I acquire some specimens; and then, shouting fare\\'e1ls when we are well away, in the proper civil "oar, resume our course. The middle of the Ogowe here is simply forested with high rocks, looking, as they stand with their grim forms abo\'e the foam, like a regiment of strange strong creatures breaJ'ting it, with their straight faces up river, and their m0ry> flo\ying curves down, as though they had on black rmrntles \\'hich were swept backw"rds. Across on the other bank rose the black-forested spurs of T omanjawk i. Our channel was IX A STIFF ASCENT free until "-e had to fight rOllnd the lIpper end of oll r bay into a long rush of strong current with bad whi rlpools curvina its face; then the ri,-er widens out and quiets down and the~ suddenly contracts-a rocky forested promontory runn ing out from each bank. There is a little village on the north bank's promontory, and, at the end of each, huge monoliths rise from the ,,-ater, making what looks like a gateway which had once been barred and through which the Ogowe had burst_ BOKO BOKO RAPIDS, OGOWF: RIVER. For the first time on thi s trip I felt discouraged; it seemed so impossible that we, with our small canoe and scanty crew, could force our way up through that gateway, when the whole Ogowe was rushing down through it. But we clung to the bank and rocks with hands, poles, and paddle, and did it ; real!y the worst part was not in the gateway but just before it, for here there is a great whirlpool, its centre hollowed some two or three feet below its rim_ It is caused, my Kembe islander says, by a great cave opening beneath the water. Above the gate the river broadens out again and we see THE R AP IDS OF THE OGmvt CHAP. the arched opening to a large' cave in the south bank ; the mountaiil-side is one mass of rock covered with the unbroken forest; and the entrance to this cave is just on the upper wall of the south bank's promontory; so, being sheltered from the current here, we rest and examine it leisurely. The river runs into it, and you can easily pass in at thi s season, but in the height of the wet season, when the ri ver level would be some twenty feet or more above its present one, I doubt if you could. They told me this place is called Boko Boko, a nd that the cave is a very long one, extending on a level some way into the hill, and then ascend ing and coming out near a mass of white rock that showed as a speck high up on the mountain. If you paddle into it you go "far far," and then" no more water li ve," and you get out and go up the tunnel, which is some- times broad, sometimes narro\\·, sometimes high, sometimes so low that you have to crawl, and so get out at the other end. One French gentleman has gone through th is performance, and I am told found "plenty plenty" bats, and hedgehogs, and snakes, They could not tell me hi s name, which I much regretted, As we had no store of bush li ghts \I'e went no further than the portals; indeed, st rictly bet\l'een ourseh'es, if [ had had every bush light in Congo Fran~ais I personally should not have relished goi ng further. I am terrified of ca\'es; it sends a creaming down my back to think of them, \Ve went across th$' ri\'er to see another ca\'e entrance on the other bank, where there is a narrow stretch of low rock -cO\'ered land at the foot of the mountains, probably under water in the wet season, The mouth of this other cave is low, between tum- bled blocks of rock. I t looked so susp iciously likea short cut to the lower regions, that I had less exploring enthusiasm about it t han even about its opposite neighbour; although they told me no man had gone down "them thing," Probably that much-to-be-honoured Frenchman who explored the other cave, allowed like myself, that if one did want to go from the Equator to Hades, there were pleasanter ways, to go than th is, My Kembe Island man sa id that just here~bouts were five ca\'e openings, the two that we had seen and another one we had not, on land, and two under the water, one of the sub-fluYial PAST THE OKANA Rl\'ER 185 ones being responsible for the whirlpool we met outside the gateway of Boko Boko, The scenery above Boko Boko was exceedingly lovely, the ri,·er shut in between its rim of mountains. As you pass up it opens out in front of you and closes in behind, the c1 osely- set confused mass of mountains altering in form as you view them from different angles, save one, Kangwe-a blunt cone, evidently the record of some great volcanic outburst; and the sandbanks show again wherever the current deflects and leaves slack water, their bright glistening colou r giving a relief to the scene. For a long period we paddle by the sou th bank, and pass a vertical cleft-like ,'alley, the upper end of which seems blocked by a finely shaped mountain, almost as conical as Kangwe. The name of this mountain is ~joko, and the name of the clear small river, that apparently monopolises the yalley floor, is the Ovata. Our peace was not of long duration, and we were soon again in the midst of a bristling forest of rock; still the current running ,,-as not dangerously strong, for the river-bed comes up in a ridge, too high for much water to come oyer at this season of the year; but in the wet season this must be one of the worst places. This ridge of rock runs two-thirds across the Ogowe, leaving a narrow deep channel by the north bank. When we had got our canoe over the ridge, mostly by standing in the \I'ater and lifting her, we found the water deep and fairly quiet. On the north bank we passed by the entrance of fhe Okana Ri,'er. Its mouth is narrow, but, the nati,'es told me, always deep, even in the height of the dry season. It is a very con- siderable river, running inland to the N.N.E. Little is known about it, save that it is narrowed into a ravine course above which it expands again; the banks of it are thickly populated by Fans, who send down a considerable trade, and have an evil reputation. In the main stream of the Ogowe below the Okana's entrance, is a long rocky island called Shandi. When ,,'e were getting O\'er our ridge .and paddling about the Okana's entrance my ears recognised a nell' sound. The rush and roar of the Ogowe we knew well 0nough, and could locate ,,·hich particular obstacle to his headlong course 186 THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOwt was making h im say things ; it was either those immovable rocks, which threw him back in foam, wh irling wi ldly, or it was tbat frin ge of gaunt skeleton trees hanging from the bank play ing a "pu ll devil , pull baker" contest that made him h iss with vexation. But this was an elemental roar. I said to M'bo : "That's a thunderstorm away among the mountains." "No, sir," says he, H that's the A lemba,'J W e padd led on towards it, hugging the right-hand bank again to avoid the mid-river rocks. For a bri ef space the mounta in wall ceased, and a lovely scene opened before us ; we seemed to be look ing into the heart of the chain of the S ierra del Cr istal, the abruptly shaped mountai ns enc ircl ing a narrow plai n or valley before us, each one of them steep in slope, everyone of them forest-clad; o ne, whose name I kn ow not unless it be what is sometimes put down as Mt. Okana on the French maps, had a conical shape which contrasted beautifully with the more irregular curves of its compan ions. The co lour down thi s gap was superb, and ve ry J a panese in the evening gloli'. The more distant peaks were soft gray- blues and purple, t hose nea rer, indigo and black. 'We soon passed th is lovely scene and entered the walled-in channel, creep ing up ,,·hat seemed an interminable hill of black water, then throug h some whirlpools and a rocky channel to the sand and rock shore o f our des ired island Kondo Kondo, a long whose northern s ide tore in thunder the Alemba. 'vVe made our canoe fast in a little cove among the rocks, and landed , pretty stiff and t ired and cons ide rably damp. This island , when we were on it, III list have been about half a mile or so long, but during the long wet season a good dea l of it is co,·ered, and only the higher parts-great heaps of stone, among which g rows a long branched willow-like shrub-are above or nearly a bove wa ter. The Adooma from K embe I sland espec ially drew my attention to this shrub, telling me his people who worked the rapids always regarded it with an arfectionate venerat ion; for he sa id it was the on ly thing that helped a man when his ca noe got thrown over in the dreaded Alcmba, for its long tough branches swimming in , or c~e to, the water a rc veritab le life lines, and his best chance.; a chance which must have failed some poor feilo\\', whose knife and leopard-skin belt IX THE ALEMBA R"PID \\'e found wedged in among the rocks on Kondo Kondo. The main part of the island is sand, with slabs and tables of polished rock sticking up through it; and in between the rocks grew in thousands most beautiful lilies, their white flowers ha,-ing a very strong scent of vanilla and their bright light-green lea,'es looking "ery lovely on the glistening pale sand among the black-gray rock. Ho,,' they stand the long submersion they must undergo I do not know; the natives tell me they begin to spring up as soon as ever the water falls and leaves the island exposed; that they very soon grow up and flower, and keep on flowering until the Ogo\ve comes ' down again and rides roughshod over Kondo Kondo for months. 'vVhile the men were making their fire I went across the island to see the great Alemba rapid, of which I had heard so much, that lay between it and the north bank. Nobler pens than mine must sing its glory and its grandeur. Its face was like nothing I have seen before. Its voice was like nothing I have heard. Those other rapids are not to be compared to it; they are wild, headstrong, and malignant enough, but the Alemba is not as they. It does not struggle, and writhe, and brawl among the rocks, but comes in a majestic springing dance, a stretch of waltzing foam, triumphant. The beauty of the night on Kondo Kondo was superb; the sun went down and the afterglow flashed across the sky in crimson, purple, and gold, leaving it a deep violet- purple, with the great stars hanging in it like moons, until the moon herself arose, lighti ng the sky long before she sent her beams down on us in this valley. As she rose, ' the mountains hiding her face grew harder and harder in outline, and deeper and deeper black, while those opposite were just enough illumined to let one see the wefts and floating veils of blue-white mist upon them, and when at last, and for a short time only, she shone full down on the savage foam of the Alemba, she turned it into a soft silver mist. Around, on all sides flickered the fire-flies, who had come to see if our fire was not a big relation of their own, and they were the sole representatives, with ourselves, of animal life. \;Vhen the moon had gone, the sky, st ill lit by the sta rs, seeming indeed to be in itself lambent, was very lovely, but it shared none of , 88 THE RAPID S OF THE OGOwt CHAP. its light with us, and we sat round our fire surrounded by an utter darkness. Cold, clammy drifts of almost tang ible mist encircled us ; ever and again came cold faint puffs of wandering wind, weird and g rim beyond description. The individua l names of the mountains round K ondo Kondo and above I cannot g ive you, though I ",as told them. For in my last shipwreck before reachi ng Kondo Kondo, I had lost my pencil ; and my note-book, even if I had had a pencil , was un fit to get nati ve names down on, being a pulpy mass, because I had kept it in my pocket after leav ing the Okana river so as to be ready for submergencies. A nd I a lso had severa l fi sh and a good dea l of water in my pocket too, so that I am thank ful I have a note left. I will not wea ry you fur ther with details of our ascen t of the Ogowe rapids, for I have done so a lready sufficiently to make yo u understand the sort of wo rk go ing up them entails, and 1 have no doubt that, cou ld I have g iven yo u a more v ivid picture o f them, yo u wou ld join me in ad mi ration of the fi ery pl uck of those fell' Frenchmen who t ra,'erse them on duty bound. r personal ly deeply regret it was not my good fortune to meet again the F rench official I had had the pleasure of meeting on the Eclairmr. H e wou ld ha,'e been tru ly g reat in hi s descrip- tion of his voyage to Franceville. I wonder how he wou ld have (( done)) his unpacking of canoes and his experi ences on Kondo Kondo, where, by the by, we came acrOSS many of the ashes o f his exped ition's a ttributi,'e fires. \,Vell! he must have been a pleasu re to France"i lle, and I hope also to the ·good fathers at Lestoun'ill e, for those places must be just s lig htly sombre for P a ri sians. Going down big rapids is always, everywhere, more dan- gerous than com ing up, because when yo u a re coming up and a whirlpool or eddy does jam you on rocks, t he current helps yo u off-certai nl y onl y \\'ith a "iew to dashing you r bra ins out a nd smashi ng your canoe on anothe r set of rocks it's got ready below; but for the t ime being it helps, and when off, you take charge and convert it plan into an in completed fragment; whereas in go ing down the cu rrent is aga inst your backing off M'bo had a series of prophet ic "is;ons as to what would happen to W:i on ou r way clowll) founded /on rem iniscence and tradition. IX GLOOMY PROPHECIES I tried to comfort him by pointing out that, were anyone of his prophecies fulfilled , it would spare our friends and relations all funeral expenses; and, unless they "'ent and wasted their money on a memorial window, that ought to be a comfort to our well- regulated minds, M'bo did not see this, but was too good a Christian to be troubled by the disagreeable conviction that was in the minds of other members of my crew, namely, that our souls, unliberated by funeral rites from this world, would have to hover for ever over the Ogowe near the scene of our catastrophe. SOUT H BANK OF THE OGOWE ABOVE BOKO HOKO. own this idea lI'as an unpleasant one-fancy having to pass the day in those caves with the bats, and then come out and wander all night in the cold mists! However, like a good many likely-looking prophecies, those of iVl 'bo did not quite come off, and a miss is as good as a mile, Twice we had a near call, by being shot in between two pinnacle rocks, within half an inch of being fatally close to each other for us ; but after some alarming scrunching sounds, and creaks from the canoe, we were shot ignominiously out down ri ver. Several times we got on to partially submerged table rocks, and were THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOwt CHAP· unceremoniously bundled off them by the Ogowe, irritated at the hindrance we were occasioning; but we never met the rocks of M'bo's prophetic soul-that lurking, submerged needle, or knife-edge of a pinnacle rock which was to rip our canoe from stem to stern, neat and clean into two pieces. A comic incident happened to us one e,·ening. The canoe jammed among a clump of rocks, and out "'e ,,'ent anyho,,' into the water. Fortunately, there were lots of rocks about; unfor- tunately, we each chose different ones to perch on; mine "'as exceedingly inconven ient, being a smooth pillar affair, to which it was all I and the French flag, which ab'ays accompanied me in upsets, could do to hold on. There "'as considerable deJay in making up our partr again, for the murkiness of the night only allowed each of us to see the foam ,,·hich flew round our own particular rock , and the noise of the rapids made it difficult for us to interchange information regarding our own individual pos ition and plan of action. However, owing to that weak-minded canoe s,,-inging round broadside on to the rocks, she did not bolt down the ri,·er. \ ,I,I hen Pierre got to her she was trying to climb sideways O\'er them, " like a crab," he said. '~le seven of us got into her- number eight we could not find and were just beginning to think the Ogowe had claimed another victim when we heard the strains of that fine hymn" Notre port est au Ciel,"-which is a great favourite hereabouts owing to its noble tune,-coming to us above the rapids' clamour in an agonised howl. \~,'e went joyful ly and picked the s inger off his rock, and then dashed downwards to further dilemmas and disasters. The course we had to take coming down was different to that we took coming up. Coming up we kept as closely as might be to the most ad,'isable bank, and dodged behind e"ery rock we could , to profit by the shelter it afforded us from the current. Com ing down, fallen-tree-fringed banks and rocks \\'ere con- verted from friend s to foes; so we kept ,,·ith all our po,,'er in the very centre of the s\\'iftest part of the current in order to avoid them. The grandest part of the whole time was coming down, below the .Alemba, where the wilole great Ogowe takes a tiger-like spring for about half a mile, I should think, before it strikes a rock reef belo\\'. As rou come out IX KEEP HER HEAD STRAIGHT from among the rocks in the upper rapid it gil"es you-or I should perhaps confine myself to saying, it ga\"e me-a pecu- .liar internal sensation to see that stretch of black water, shining like a burnished sheet of metal, sloping down before one, at such an ang le. A ll you ha,·e got to do is to keep your canoe-head straight-quite straight, you understand-for any failure so to do will land you the other side of the tomb, in- stead of in a cheerful no-end-of-a-row with the lower rapid's rocks. This lower rapid is one of tbe worst in the dry season; maybe it is so in the wet too, for the ri ver's channel here turns an elbow-sharp curve which infuriates the Ogowe in a most dangerous manner. I hope to see the Ogowe next time in the wet season- there must be several more of th.ese g reat sheets of water then o,·er what are rocky rapids now. Just think what com ing dO\\"I1 over that ridge above Boko Boko will be like! I do not fancy however it would ever be possible to get up the river when it is at its height, wi th so small a crew as we were when we went and played our knock-about farce, before King Death, in his amphitheatre in the Sierra del Crista!. CHAPTER X LEMBARENE I n which is given some account of the episode of the Hippopotamc, and of the voyager's at tempts at controlling an Ogowe canoe; and also of the Igalwa tribe. O N my return to Talagouga, I find both my good friends sick with fever-NI. Forget very ill indeed . Providentially the Eclaireur came up river, with the Doctor Admin istrator on board, and he came ashore and prescribed, and in a few days ;VI. F orget was better. I say good-bye to Talagouga with much regret, and go on board the Eclaire1lr, when she returns from Njole, with all my bottles and belongings. On board I find no othe r passenger ; the captain's Engli sh has widened out con- siderably; and he is as pleasant, cheery, and spoiling for a fight as ever ; but he has a preoccupied manner, and a most peculiar set of new habits, which I find are shared by the engineer. Both of them make rapid dashes to the rail, and nervously scan the river for a minute and then return to some occupa- t ion, only to dash from it to the ra il again. During breakfast their conduct is nerve-shaking. Hasti ly taking a few mouth- ful s, the captain drops his knife and fork and simply hurls his seamanlike form through the nearest door out on to the deck. In another minute he is back again, a nd with just a shake of his head to the engineer, continues hi s meal. The engineer shortly a fterwa rds fli es from his seat, and being far thi nner than the captain, goes through his nearest door with e\-en g reater rapid ity; returns, and shakes his head at the captain , and continues his mea l. Excitement of this kind is in- fectious, and I also wonder whether I ought not to show a sympathetic fri end liness by fl y ing from my seat and hurl- ing myself on to t he cleck through my nearest door, too. CH. X A SMOOTH RUN DOvV N 193 ---------------- But although there a re plenty of doors, as four enter the saloon from the deck, I do not see my way to doing this per- formance aimlessly, and what in this "orld they are both after I cannot think. So I confine mysel f to woman's true sphere, and assist in a humble way by catching the wine and V ichy water bottles, glasses, and plates of food , which at e\'ery performance are jeopardised by the members of the nobler sex starting off with a considerable quantity of the ample table-cloth wrapped round their legs, A t last I can stand it no longer, so ask the captain point-blank what is the matter. "No- thing," says he, bounding out of his chair and fl y ing out of his doorway ; but on his return he tells me he has got a bet on of two bottles of champagne with \~Ioermann's agent for Njole, as to ,,'ho shall reach Lembarene first, and the German agent has started off some time before the Eclail'elt1' in his little steam launch. During the afternoon we run smoothly along; the free pulsations of the engines telling what a very different thing coming down theOgowe is to going up against its terrificcurrent. Every now and again we stop to pick up cargo, or discharge over-carried cargo, and the captain's mind becomes lulled by getting no news of the 'vVoermann's launch having passed down. He communicates this to the engineer ; it is impossible she could have passed the Edai""",, since they started, there- fore she must be somewhere behind at a subfactory, "lVest-a pas?" "Ouz~ oui, certai;zellle1Zt," says the engineer.. The engineer is, by these considerations, also lulled, and feels he may do something else but scan the river a fa sister Ann. \~Ihat that something is puzzles me; it evidently requires secrecy, and he shri nks from detec- tion. First he looks down one side of the deck, no one there; then he looks down the other, no one there; good so far. I then see he has put his head through one of the saloon port- holes ' no one there ' he hesitates a few seconds until I begin to wo;,der whether his head will suddenly appear through my port; but he regards this as an unnecessary precaution, and I hear him enter hi s cabin which abuts on mine and there is silence for some minutes. \~riting home to his mother, thin k I , as I go on putting a new braid round the bottom of a worn o 194 LEMBARENE CHAP_ sk irt. Almost immediately after follows the sound of a little cl ick from the next cabin, and then apparently one of the denizens of the in fernal regions has got its tail smashed in a door and the heavy hot afternoon a ir is reft by an inchoate howl of agony. I drop my needlework and take to the deck; but it is after all only that shy retiri ng young man practising secretl y on his clarionet. T he captain is drowsily looking down the river. But repose is not long allowed to that active spirit; he sees something in the water-what? "Hippopotame," he ejaculates. Now both he and the engineer frequently do this thing, and then fl y off to their guns-bang, bang, finish; but this t ime he does not dash for his gun, nor does the engineer, who flies out of his cabin at the sound of the war shout " Hippopotame." I n va in I look across the broad ri ver with its stretches of yeJJo,,· sandbanks, where the "ltippopota1lte" should be, but I can see nothing but four black stumps stick ing up in the water away to the right. Meanwh il e the captain and the engineer are fl y ing about getting off a crew of blacks into the canoe we are towing alongside. This being done the captain explains to me that on the voyage up "the engineer had fired at, and hit a hippo- potamus, and without doubt this was its body floating." \Ve a re now close enough even for me to recognise the four stumps as the deceased's legs, and soon the canoe is alongside them and makes fast to one, and then starts to paddle back, hippo and all, to the Eclaireu?'. But no such thing; let them paddle and shout as hard as they like, the hi ppo's weight simply anchers them. T he Eclaire,"- by now has dropped down the river past them, and has to sweep round and run back. Recognising promptly what the trouble is, the energetic captain grabs up a broom, ti es a light cord belong ing to the lead li ne to it, and holding the broom by the end of its handle, swings it round his head and hurls it at the canoe. The arm of a merciful Providence being interposed, the broom-tomahawk does not hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current, well ou t of reach of the canoe. The capta in seeing this gross clereliction of duty by a Chargeur Reun is broom, hauls it in hand over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other encl of its x CAPTURE OF A HIPPOPOTAMUS J93 line to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the broom into the water, a bou t ten yards above the canoe, and it drifts towards it. Breathless exci tement! surely they will get it now. Alas, no! Just when it is within reach of the canoe, a fearful shudder runs through the broom. I t throws up its head and sinks beneath the tide. A sensat ion of stun comes over all of us. The crew of the canoe, ready and eager to g rasp the approaching aid, gaze blankly at the circling ripples round where it sank. In a second the captain knows what has happened. That heavy hawser which has been paid out after it has dragged it down, so he hauls it on board again. The Eclairellr goes now close enough to the hippo-anchored canoe for a rope to be flun g to the man in her bows; he catches it and freezes on gall antly. Sayed ! No! Oh horror! The lo\\'er deck hums with fear that after all it wiII not taste that. toothsome hippo chop, for the man who has caught the rope is as nearly as possible jerked flyin g out of the canoe when the strain of the Ec!aireur contend ing with the hippo's inertia flies a long it, but hi s companion behind him grips h im by the legs and is in hi s turn grabbed , and the crew holding on to each other with their hands, and on to their craft with their feet, save the man holdi ng on to the rope and the whole situation; and slowly bobbing towards us comes the hippo- potamus, who is shortly hau led on board by the winners in triumph. My esteemed friends, the captain and the engineer, who of course have been below during this haul ing, now rush on to the upper deck, each coatless, and carrying an enormous butcher's knife. They dash into the saloon, where a terrific sharpening of these instruments takes place on the stee l belonging to the saloon carving-knife, and down stairs again. By looking down the ladder, I can see the pink, pig-like hippo, whose colour has been soaked out by the water, lying on the lower deck and the capta in and engineer slitt ing down the sk in intent on gralloching operations. Providentially, my prophetic soul induces me to leave the top of the ladde r and go forward- " run to win'ard," as Captain Murray wou ld say-for within two minutes the capta in and engineer are up the ladder as if they had been blown up by the boilers bursting, and go as o 2 LE MBARE N-E CH.-\P. one man for the brandy bottle; and they wanted it if ever man did; for remember that hippo had been dead and in the warm ri ver-water for more than a week. The captain had had enough of it, he said, but the engineer stuck to the job with a courage I profoundly admire, and he saw it through and then retired to his cabin; sand-and-can- vassed himself first, and then soaked and saturated himself in Florida water. The flesh gladdened the hearts of the crew a nd lower-deck passengers a nd also of the inhabitants of Lemba rene, who got dashes of it on our arri val there. Hippo fl esh is not to be despised by black man or white; I have enjoyed it far more than the stringy beef or va pid goat's fl esh one gets down here. I stayed on board the Eclai,·ell1" all night; for it was dark when we reached Lembarene, too dark to go round to Kang,,·e ; and next mornin g, after ta ki ng a fa re,,·ell of her-1 hope not a fi nal one, for she is a most luxurious little \·essel for the Coast , as the feeding on board is excellent and the soc iety varied and charm ing-I went round to K angwe. IV1. and Mme. J acot recei\·ed me back most kindly, and they both looked a ll the better for my having been away. M. H aug a nd a you ng missionary from Ea ra ka, who had come up to Lembarene for a cha nge aft er fever, were busy starting to go up to Talagouga in a canoe) which I was ,-err glad of, because M. H aug, at a ny ra,te, would be of immense help to Mme. a nd iVI. F orget, ,,·hil e they w~re in such bad health ; onl y during hi s absence M. J acot had enough work for an y five men. I remained some time in the Lembarene distri ct and saw and learnt many things ; l owe most of what I learnt to M. and M me. J acot who knew a great deal about both the natives and the dis t ri ct, and l owe much of what I saw to having acqu ired the a rt of managing by myself a native canoe. This " reck lessness" of mine I a m sure did not merit the severe cri t icism it has been subjected to, for my performances gave immense amusement to othe rs ( I can hea r Lemba rene's sh rieks of la ughter now) and to myself they gave great pleasure. My fi rst attempt was made at Talagouga one \·ery hot x A TR1.-\L TRIP 197 afternoon . M. and Mme. Forget were, I thought, safe hadng their siestas, Oranie was with Mrrle. Gacon. I knew where iII me. Gacon was for certain; she was with M. Gacon; and I knew he was up in the sawmill shed, out of sight of the river, because of the soft thump, thump, thump of the big water-wheel. There was therefore no one to keep me out of mischief, and I was too frightened to go into the forest that afternoon, because on the previous afternoon I had been stalked as a wild beast by a cannibal savage, and I am nervous. Besides, and above all, it is quite imposs ible to see other people, even if they are only black, naked savages, gliding about in canoes, without wishing to go and glide about yourself. So I went down to where the canoes were tied by their noses to the steep !Jank, and finding a paddle, a broken one, I unloosed the smallest canoe. Unfortunately this was fifteen feet or so long, but I did not know the disadvantage of having, as it ' were, a long-tailed canoe then-I did ·shortly afterwards. The promontories running out into the river on each side of the mission beach give a little st retch of slack water between the bank and the mill-race-like current of the Ogow", and I wisely decided to keep in the slack water, until I had found out how to steer-most important thing steering. I got into the bow of the canoe, and shol'ed off from the bank all right; then I knelt down-learn how to paddle standing up by and by-good so far. I rapidly learnt how to steer from the bow, but I could not get up any pace. Intent on acquiri ng pace, I got to the edge of the slack water; and then dis- playing more wisdom, I turned round to avoid it, proud as a peacock, you understand, at having found out how to turn round. At this moment, the cu rrent of the greatest equatorial river in the world, grabbed my canoe by its tail. \~le spun round and round for a few seconds, like a teetotum, I steering the whole time for all I was worth, and then the current dragged the canoe ignominiously down river, tail fore- most. Fortunately a big tree was at that time temporarily hanging against the rock in the river, just belo\\- the sawmill beach. Into that tree the canoe shot with a crash, and I hung on, and shipping my paddle, pulled the canoe into the slack \I'ater LEMBARENE CHAP. again, by the aid of the branches of the tree, "'hich I was in mortal terror would come off the rock, and insist on accom- panying me and the canoe, via Kama country, to the Atlantic Ocean; but it held, and when I had got safe against the side of the pinnacle-rock I wiped a perspiring brow, and searched in my mind for a piece of information regarding navigation that would be applicable to the management of long-tailed Adooma canoes. I could not think of one for some minutes. Captain Murray has imparted to me at one time and another an enormous mass of hints as to the management of vessels, but those vessels were all presupposed to ha,'e steam power. But he having been the first man to take an ocean-going steamer up to Matadi on the Congo, through the terrific currents that whirl and fly in Hell 's Cauldron, knew about currents, and I remembered he had said regarding tak- ing vessels through them, " Keep all the headway you can on her." Good! that hint inverted will fit this situation like a glove, and I'll keep all the tailway I can off her. Feeling now as safe as only a human being can feel who is backed up by a sound principle, I was cautiously crawling to the tail -end of the canoe, intent on kneeling in it to look after it, when I heard a dreadful outcry on the bank. Looking there I saw Mme. Forget, Mme. Gacon, M. Gacon, and their attribu- tive crowd of miss ion children all in a state of frenzy. They said lots of things in chorus. " What?" sa id 1. They said some more and added gesticulations. Seeing I was wasting their time as I could not hear, I drove the canoe from the rock and made my way, mostly by steering, to t he bank close by; and then tying the canoe firmly up I walked over the mill stream and di,'ers other things towards my anxious fr iends. "You'll be drowned," they said. "Gracious goodness! " said I , " I thought that half an hour ago, but it's all right now; I can steer." After much conversation I lulled their fears regarding me, and having received strict orders to keep in the stern of the canoe, because that is the proper place when you are managing a canoe single-handed, I returned to my studies. I had not however lulled my friends' interest regarding me, and they stayed on the bank watching. x AMATEUR CANOEING 199 found first, that' my education in steering from the bow was of no a\'ail; second, that it was all right if you reversed it. For instance, when you are in the bow, and make an inward "troke with the paddle on the right-hand side, the bow goes to the right; whereas, if you make an inward stroke on the right-hand side, when you are sitting in the stern, the bow then goes to the left. U nder- stand? Having grasped this law, I crept a long up river; and, by Allah! before I had gone twenty yards, if that wretch, the current of the greatest, &c" did not grab hold of the nose of my canoe, and we teetotummed round again as merrily as ever. My audience screamed. I knew what they were saying, ., You'll be drOlmed! Come back! Come back! " but I heard them and I heeded not. If you attend to advice in a crisis you're lost; besides, I couldn't "Come back" just then. Howe\'er, I got into the slack water again, by some very ' showy, high-class steering. Still steering, fine as it is, is not all you require and hanker after. You want pace as well, and pace, except when in the clutches of the current, I had not so far attained. Perchance, thought I, the pace region in a canoe may be in its centre; so I got a leng on my knees into the centre to experiment. Bitter failure; the canoe took to sidling down river broadside on, like Mr. Winkle's horse. Shouts of laughter from the bank. Both bow and stern education utterly inapplicable to centre; and so, seeing I was utterly thrown away there, I crept into the bows, and in a few more minutes I steered my canoe, perfectly, in among.its fellows by the bank and secured it there. Mme. Forget ran down to meet me and assured me she had not laughed so much since s he had been in Africa, although she was frightened at the time lest I should get capsized and drowned, I believe it, for she is a sweet and gracious lady; and r quite see, as she demonstrated, that the sight of me, teetotumming about, s teering in an elaborate and showy way all t he time, was irresistibly comic. And she gave a most amusing account of how, when she started looking for me to give me tea, a charming habit of hers, she could not see me in among my bottles, and so asked the little black boy where I was . ., There," said he, pointing to the tree hanging against the rock 200 LEMBARENE out in the river; and she, seeing me hitched with a canoe against the rock, and knowing the danger and depth of the river, got alarmed. \Vell, when I got down to L embarene I naturally went on with my canoeing studies, in pursuit of the attainment of pace. Success crowned my efforts, and I can honestly and truly say that there are only two things I am proud of-one is that Doctor Glinther has approved of my fishes, and the other is that I can paddle an Ogowe canoe. Pace, style, steering and all, "All same for one" as if I were an Ogowe African. A strange, incongruous pair of things: but I often wonder what are the things other people are really most proud of; it would be a quaint and repaying subject for investigation. Mme. J acot gave me every help in canoeing, for she is a remarkably clear-headed woman, and recognised that, as I was always getting soaked, anyhow, I ran no extra danger in gett ing soaked in a canoe ; and then, it being the dry season, there was an immense stretch of water opposite Andande beach, which was quite shallow. So she saw no need of m)' getting drowned. The sandbanks were showing their yellow heads in all direc- tions when I came down from Talagouga, and just opposite An · dande there was sticking up out of the water a great, graceful, palm frond. I t had been stuck into the headofthe pet sandbank, and every day " 'as visited by the boys and girls in canoes to see how much longer they would have to wait for the sandbank's appearance. A few days after my return it showed, and in two days more there it was, acres and acres of it, looking like a great, golden carpet spread on the surface of the centre of the clear water- clear here, down this side of Lembarene Island , because the ri,'er runs fairl y quietly, and has time to deposit its mud. D ark brown the Ogowe fli es past the other side of the island, the ma in current being deflected that ,,'a), by a bend, j ust below the entrance of the Nguni. There was g rea t rejoicing. Canoe-load after canoe-load of boys and g irls went to the sandbank, some doing a little fi shing round its rim, others bring ing the washing there} all sky larking and singing. F ew prettier sights have r ever seen than those x DEATH OY M. JACOT 201 on that sandbank-the merry broll'n form s dancing or lying stretched on it : the gaudy-coloured patchwork quilts and chintz mosquito-bars that have been washed, spread out drying, looking from Kangwe on the hill above, like beds of bright flowers. By night when it was moonlight there would be bands of dancers on it with bush-light torches, gyrating, intermingling and separating till you could think you ,\"ere looking at a dance of stars. They commenced affairs \"ery early on that sandbank, and they kept them up very late; and al l the time there came from it a soft murmur of laughter and song. Ah me! if the aim of life were happiness and pleasure, Africa should send us mis- sionaries instead of our sending them to her-but, fortunately for the work of the world, happiness is not. One thing I re- member which st ruck me \"ery much regard ing the sandbank, and this was that Mme. Jacot found such pleasure in taking her work on to the verandah, where she could see it. I knew she did not care for the songs and the dancing. One day she said to me, (( I t is such a relief." Ci A rel ief?" I said. (( Yes,. do you not see that until it shows there is nothing but forest, forest, forest, and that still stretch of river. That bank is the only piece of clear g round I see in the year, and that only lasts a few weeks until the wet season comes, and then it goes,. and there is nothing but forest, forest, forest, for another year. I t is two years now since I came to this place; it may be I know not how many more before we go home again." I grieve to say, for my poor fri end's sake, that her life at Kangwe was nearly at its end. Soon after my return to England I heard of the death of her husband from malignant fever. M. J acot was a fine, powerful , energetic man, in the prime of life. He was a teetotaler and a vegetarian; and although constantly tra\"elling to and fro in his district on his evangeli sing 1V0rk, he had no foo lish recklessness in him. No one would have thought that he would have been the first to go of us who used to sit round his hospitable table. His delicate wife, his two you ng children or I lI·ould have seemed far more likely. His loss will be a lasting one to the people he risked his life to (what he regarded) save. The nati ves held him in the greatest affection and respect, and his influence 202 LEMBARENE CHAP, over them was considerable, far more profound than that of ,any other miss ionary I have ever seen. His loss is also great to those students of Africa who are working on the culture or on the languages ; 'his knowledge of both was extensive, par- t icularly of t he little known lang uages of the Ogowe district. H e was, when I left, busily employed in compiling a dictionary o f the Fan ton gue, and had many other works on language in contemplation. His work in this sphere would have had .a high value, for he was a man with a university education and well g rounded in Latin and Greek, and thoroughly acquainted with both English and French literature, for although born a Frenchman, he had been brought up in America. H e was a lso a cultivated musician , and he and Mme. Jacot in the evenings would sing old French songs, Swiss songs, English songs, in their rich full voices ; and then if you sto le softly out on to the verandah, you would often find i t c rowded with a s il ent, black audience, li stening intently. The amount of work M. and Mme. J acot used to get through was, to me) amaz ing, and I think the Ogow€: Protestant miss ion sadl y short-handed- its miss ionaries not being content t o follow the usua l Protesta nt plan out in 'West Africa, namely, quietly sitting down a nd keeping house, with just a few native children indoors to do the housework, and cl ose by a school a nd a little church where a service is held on S undays. The representatives of the Miss ion E vangelique, go to and fro throughout the di strict round each sta tion on evangel ising work, among some of the most dangerous and uncivilised tribes in A frica, frequent ly spending a fortni ght at a t ime away from their homes, on t he waten\'ays of a wild and d angerous country. In addition to going themseh'es, they send tra ined nati ves as evangelis ts a nd Bible readers, and keep a keen eye on the trained nati ve, which means a con- s iderabl e a mount o f worry and stra in too. The work on the s tati ons is heavy in OgO\\'€: districts) because ",hen you ha\'e got a clearing made a nd a ll the build ings up, y ou ha\'e by no means fini shed with the affa ir, fo r you ha\'e to fi ght the Ogowe forest back, as a Dutchma n fi ghts the sea. But t he l11 ain cause of work is the store, which in this e xhausting cl imate is lnore than enough work for one man alone. NATIVE FINANCE 203 Payments on the Ogowe are made in goods; the natives do not use any coinage-equivalent, save in the strange case of the Fans, which does not touch general trade and which I will speak of later. They have not even the brass bars and cheetems that are in used in Calabar, or cowries as in Lagos. In orde r to expedite and simplify thi s goods traffic, a written or printed piece of paper is employed-pract ically a cheque, which is .called a "bon " or ({ book," and these H bOil s 11 are cashed-i.e. gooded, at the store. They are for three amounts. Five fura = a dollar. One fura = a franc. Desu = fifty centimes = half a fura. The value g iven for these " bons" is the same from government, trade, and mission. A lthough the Mission E vangelique does not trade-i.e. buy produce and sell it at a profit, its representati\"es have a g reat deal o f business to attend to through the store, which is practicall y a bank. All the nati ve evangelists, black teachers, Bible- readers and labourers on the stations are paid off in these bons ; and when any representati ve of the mission is away on a jour- ney, food bought for themselves and their canoe crews is paid for in bons, which are brought in by the natives a t their com"enience, and changed for goods at the store" Therefore for several hours every weekday the missionary has to devote himself to store work, and store work ou t here is by no means playing at shop. It is very hard , tiring, exasperating work when you have to deal with it in full, as a trader, when it is necessary for you to purchase produce at a price that will give· you a reasonable margin of profit over sto ring, customs' duties, shipping expenses, &c., &c. But it is qui te enough to try t he patience of any saint when you are only keeping store to pay on bons, d fa missionary; for each class of arti cle used in trade -and there are some hundreds of them-has a definite and acknowledged value, but where the trouble comes in is that different articles have the same value; for example, six fi sh- hooks and one pocket-handkerchief have the same value, or you can make up that value in lucifer matches, pomatum, a mirror, a hair comb, tobacco, or scent in bottles. . Now, if you are a trader, certain of these articles cost you more than others, although they have an identical value to the native, and so it is to you r ad\"antage to pay what we 204 LEMBARE:>IE CHAP. should call, in Cameroons, " a Kru, cheap copper," and you ha,'e a lot of worry to effect this. To the missionary this does not so much matter. It makes absolutely no difference to the native, mind you; so he is by no means done by the trader. Take powder for an example. There is no profit on powder fo r the trader in Congo Fran~ais, but the native always wants it because he can get a tremendous profit on it from his black brethren in the bush; hence it pays the trader to give him his bon out in Boma check, &c., better than in gunpowder. This is a fruitful spring of arg ument and persuasion. How- ever, whether the native is pass ing in a bundle of rubber or a tooth of ivory, or merely cashing a bon for a week's bush catering, he is in Congo Fran~ais incapable of deciding what he will have when it comes to the poin t. He comes into the shop with a bon in hi s hand , and we will say, for example, the idea in his head that he wants fi sh-hooks-" jupes," he calls them-but, confronted with the visible temptation of pomatum, he hes itates, and scratches his head yiolently. Surrounding him there are ten or twenty other natives with their minds in a sim ilar wavering state, but ret anxious to be served forthwith. In consequence of the stimulating scratch, he remembers that one of hi s wi ves said he was to bring some lucifer matches, another wanted cloth fo r herself, and another knew of some rubber she could buy very cheap, in tobacco, of a F an woman who had stolen it. This rubber he knows he can take to the trader's store and sell for pocket-handkerchiefs of a superior "pattern, or gunpowder, or rum, which he cannot get a t the mission sto re. H e fina ll y gets something and takes it home, and likely enoug h brings it back, in a day or so, somewhat damaged, des irous of chang ing it for some other a rticle or a rticl es. R emember also that these Bantu, like the Negroes, think ex terna lly, in a loud "oice; like lI1r. Kip- li ng's 'oont, H he smells most awful vile," and, jf he be a Fan, he accompa nies his obselTa tions with v iolent dramatic gestu res, a nd let the customer's tribe or sex be \I'hat it mar , the cus tomer is sadly, sadly li able to pick up any portable object within reach, under the shadow of his companions' uproar, and stO\V it away in his armpits, bet\\"een his legs, or, if his cloth be la rge enough, in that. Picture to yourself the MISSJON SCHOOLS 205 perplexities of a Christian minister, engaged in such an OCCll - pation as storekeeping under these circumstances, with, likely enough, a touch of fe,'er on him and jiggers in his feet; and when the sto re is closed the goods in it requ iring constant vigilance to keep them free from mildew and white ants. Then in addition to the store \\'ork, a fruitful source of work and worry are the schools, for both boys and girl s. It is regarded as futile to attempt to get any real hold over the children unless they a re remO\'ed from the influence of the country fashions that su rround them in their village homes; therefore the schools are boarding; hence the entire care of the children, including feeding and clothing, falls on the missionary. The French government has made things ha rder by decree- ing that the children sbou ld be taught French. I t does not require that evang€listic work should be ca rried on in French, but that if foreign languages are taught, that language shall be French first. The general feeling of the miss ionaries is against this, because of the great difficulty in teaching the native this delica te and highly complex language. E ngli sh, the A fricans pick up sooner than any foreign language. I do not like to think that my esteemed friend D onna Maria de Sousa Coutinho is ri ght in saying " because it is so much more like their o\vn savage tongue," but regard thi s facility in acquiring it to the uni"ersal use of it in the form of trade English in the villages round them. Indeed, I belie,-e that if the missionary was left a lone he would not teach any Euro- pean language, but confine himself to us ing the nati,'e languages in his phonetically written-down form ; because the African s learn to read this "ery quickly, and the missionary can confine their reading to those books he thinks suitable for perusal by hi s flock-namely, the Bible, hymn-book, and Bunyan's Holy War. The native does not see th ings in this light, and half the time comes to the schools only to learn, what he ca lls" sense," i.e., whi te man's ways and language, which will enable him to trade with greater advantage. Still, I think the French government is right, from yrhat I ha\'e seen in our own posses- sions of the disadvantage, expense, and inconvenience of the 206 LEMBARENE CHAP. . bulk of the governed not knowing the language of their governors, both parties having therefore frequently to depend on native interpreters; and native interpreters are" deceitful above all things and desperately wicked" occasionally, and the just administration of the country under these conditions is almost impossible. You may say, "Vhy should not the government official learn the nat ive language like the missionary? and I think govern- ment officials who a re settled li ke missionaries on the Coast should do so, but if you enforced this rule in Congo Fran~a i s> where the government offi cials fl y to and fro, Mezzofantiso on ly need app ly for appointments. Take the Gaboon district,. to use the handy, but now obsolete division of the colony_ T his district, being the seaboard one, is where most of the- dealings with the nati ves occu r. In my small way I have met there with representatives of tribes speaking Shekani, Balungi,. M'benga, M'billo, M'pongwe, Bakele, Ncomi, Igalwa, Adooma, A jumba, and Fan, and there are plenty more. Neither are any of these tribes neatly confined to distinct districts, so that you might teach your unfortunate official one language, and then tie ' him down in one place, where he could use it. Certain district ,. have a preponderance of certai n tribes, but that is a ll. The· Fans are everywhere in the northern districts of the Ogow" :. but among them, in the districts hlelow L embarene, you wil l find Igalwa and Aj umba vill ages, s ide by side, with likely enough just across the stream a Bakele one. A bove Talagouga, until you get to Boue, yo u could get along with Fan alone; but there is no government rule that requires. languages up there because, barring keeping the Ogowe open to the French flag, it is not interfered "' ith; and then when yo u get up to Franceville abo\'e Boue, there is quite another g roup of languages, Okota, Batoke, Adooma, &c., &c., and the Middle Congo languages. To require a knowledge of all these languages would be absurd, and necessitate the multipli- cat ion of officials to an enormous extent. But to return to the Mission E\-angelique schools. This mission does not undertake technical instruct ion. All the training the boys get is religious and scholastic. T he girls. fare somewhat better, for they get in addition instruction from· x TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION 207 the mission ladies in sewing, washing, and ironing, and for the rest of it they have an uncommonly pleasant and easy time, which they most bitterly regret as past when they go to their husbands, for husbands they each of them have. It is strange that no technical instruction is given by any government out here. All of the governments support mission schools by grants: but the natives turned out by the schools are at the best only fit for clerks, and the rest of the world seems to have got a glut of clerks already, and Africa does not want clerks yet, it wants planters-I do not say only plantation hands, for I am sure from what I have seen in Cameroons of the self-taught native planters there, that intelligent Africans could do an immense amount to de\'elop the re,sources of the country. The Roman Catholic mission at Landana carries on a great work in giving agricultural instruction in improved methods: but most of the (')ther technical mission stations confine their attention to teaching carpentering, bricklaying, smith's work, tailoring, book-binding and printing, trades which, save the two first named, Africa is not yet in urgent need to be taught. The teaching even of sewing, washing, and ironing is a little previous. Good Mme. Jacot will weary herself for months to teach a Fan girl how to make herself a dress, and the girl will learn eagerly, and so keenly enjoy the dress when it is made that it breaks one's heart when one knows that this same girl, when her husband takes her to his village soon, in spite of the two dresses the mission gave her, will be reduced to a bit of filthy rag, which will serve her for dress, sheet, towel and dish cloth; for even were her husband willing to get her more cloth to exercise her dressmaking accomplish- ments· on, he dare not. Men are men, and women are women all the world over; and what would his other wives, and his mother and sisters say? Then the washing and ironing are quite parlour accomplishments when your husband does not wear a shirt, and household linen is non-existent as is the case among the Fans and many other African tribes. There are other things that the women might be taught with greater advantage to them and those round them, It is strange that all the cooks employed by the Europeans ::208 LE:VlBARENE CHAP. should be men, yet all the cooking among the nati\'es them - seh'es is done by women, and done abominably badly in all the Bantu tribes I have ever come across; and the Bantu are in this particular, and indeed in most" particulars, far inferior to the true Negro; though I must say this is not the orthodox view, The Negroes cook uniformly very well, and at moments are inspired in the direction of palm-oil chop and fish cooking, Not so the Bantu, whose methods cry aloud for impro\'ement, they having just the very easiest and laziest way possible of dealing with food, The food supply consists of plantain, yam, koko, sweet potatoes, maize, pumpkin, pineapple, and ochres, fi sh both wet and smoked, and flesh of many kinds- including human in certain districts-snails, snakes, and cray- fi sh, and big maggot-like pup\f iki went off into a paroxysm of falsetto sneezes the li ke of which I have ne'·er heard ; nor evidently had the gori ll a, who doubtless th inking, as one of his black co-rela tives would have thought, that the phenomenon favoured Duppy, went off after h is fam ily with a celerity that was amazing the moment he touched the forest, and disappeared as they had , swinging himself along through it from bough to bough, in a way that convin ced me that, g iven the necessity of getting about in tropica l forests, man has made a mistake in gett ing hi s arms shortened. I have seen many wild animals in their native wilds, but never have I seen any thin g to equal gorillas going t hrough bush ; it is a g raceful , powerful, superbly perfect hand-trapeze performance' After this spo rtin g adventure, we returned, as I usually return from a sporting adventure, without measurements or the body. Our fi rst day's march, though the longest, was the easiest, though, providen ti a lly I did not know this at the time. From my 'vVoermann road wa lks I judge it was well twenty-five miles. It was easiest however, from its ly ing for the greater part of 1 I have no hesitation in sa);ing that the gorilla is the most horrible wild animal I have seen. I have seen at close quarters specimens of the most important big game of Central Africa, and, with the exception of snakes, I have run away from all of them; but although elephants, leopards) and py~hons give you a feeling of alarm) they do not g ive that fee ling of horrible disgust that an old gorilla g ives on account of its hideousness of appearance. XII A FORCED MARCH the way through the gloomy type of forest. All day long we never saw the sky once. The earlier part of the da)' we were steadily going up hill , here and there making a small descent, and then up again, unti l we came on to what was apparently a long ridge, for on either side of us we could look down into deep, dark, ra\'ine- like valleys. Twice or thrice we descended into these to cross them, finding at their bottom a small or large swamp with a river running through its midst. Those ri\'ers all went to Lake Ayzingo. We had to hurry because Ki\'a, who was the only one among us who had been to Efoua, sa id that unless we did we should not reach Efoua that night. I said," Why not stay for bush? " not having contracted any love for a night in a Fan town by the experience of M'fetta; moreover the Fans were not sure that after all the whole party of us might not spend the evening at Efoua, \vhen we did get there, simmer- ing in its cooking-pots. Ngouta, I may remark, had no doubt on the subject at all, and regretted having left Mrs. N. keenly, and the Andande store sincerely. But these Fans are a fine sporting tribe, and allowed tbey would risk it; besides, they were almost certain they had friends at Efoua; and, in addition, they showed me trees scratched in a way that was magnification of the con- dition of my own cat's pet table leg at home, demonstrating leopards in the vicin ity. I kept going, as it was my on ly chance, because I found I st iffened if I sat down, and they always carefully told me the direction to go in when they sa t down; with their su perior pace they soon caught me up, and then passed me, leaving me and Ngouta and sometimes Singlet and Pagan behind, we, in our turn , overtaking them, with this difference that they were sitting down when we did so. About five o'clock I was off ahead and noticed a path \d1ich I had been told I should meet with, and, when met \\'ith, I must follow. The path was slightly indistinct, but by keeping my eye on it I could see it. Presen tly I came to a place where it went out, but appeared again on the other side of a clump of underbush fairly distinctly. I made a short cut for it and the next news was I was in a heap, on a lot of spikes, FROM NCOV] TO ESOON CHAP. some fifteen feet or so below ground lel'el, at the bottom of a bag-shaped game pit. It is at these times you realise the blessing of a good thick skirt. Had [ paid heed to the adl'ice of many people in England, who ought to have known better, and d id not do it themselves, and adopted masculine garments, [ should have been spiked to the bone, and done for. \Nhereas, sal'e for a good many bruises, here I was with the fulness of my sk irt tucked under me, sitting on nine ebony spikes some twelve inches long, in comparati ve comfort, howling lustily to be hau led out. The Duke came along first, and looked down at me. I sa id, "Get a bush-rope, and haul me out." He grunted and sat down on a log. The Passenger came next, and he looked down. "You kill?" says he. "Not much," say [ ; « get a bush-rope and haul me ou t." "No fit/' says he, and sat down on the log. Presently, however, KiYa and \~I iki came up, and 'Niki went and selected the one and only bush-rope s uitable to haul an English lady, of my exact complexion, age, and size, out of that one particular pit. They seemed rare round there from the time he took ; and I was just casting aboutin my mind as to what method would be best to employ in getting up the smooth, yellow, sandy-clay, incurved walls, when he arrived with it, and I was out in a twinkling, and very much ashamed of myself, until Silence, who was then leading, disappeared through the path before us with a despairing yell. E ,ach man then pulled the skin cover off hi s g un lock, care- fully looked to see if things there were all right and ready loosened his knife in its snake-skin sheath; and then we set about hauling poor S ilence out, binding him up where neces- sary with cool green leaves; for he, not having a sk irt, had got a good deal frayed at the edges on those spikes. Then we closed up, for the Fans said these pits were symptomatic of the immediate neighbourhood of Efoua. \Ne sou nded our g round, as we went into a thick plantain patch, through which we could see a g reat clearing in the forest, and the low huts of a big town. \Ne charged into it, goi ng right through the guard-house gateway, at one end, in single file, as its narrowness obliged llS, and into the street-shaped town, and formed ourselves into as imposing a look ing party as possible Xii RECEPTION AT EFOUA 271 in the centre of the street. The Efouerians regarded us with much amazement, and the women and children cleared off into the huts, and took stock of~ through the door-holes. There were but few men in the town, the majority, we subsequently learnt, being away after elephants. But there were quite suffi- cient left to make a crowd in a ring round us. Fortunately Wiki and IZiva's friends were present, and we were soon in another word-fog, but not so bad a one as that at M'fetta ; indeed Efoua struck me, from the first, fa vourably; it was, for one thing, much cleaner than most Fan towns I have been in. As a result of the confabulation, one of the chiefs had his house cleared out for me. It consisted of two apartments almost bare of everythi ng save a pile of boxes, and a small fire on the floor, some little bags hanging from the roof poles, and a general supply of insects. The inner room contained nothing save a hard plank, raised on four short pegs from the earth floor. I shook hands with and thanked the chief, and directed that all the loads should be placed inside the huts. I must admit my good friend was a villainous-looking savage, but he behaved most hospitably and kindly. From what I had heard of the Fan, I deemed it advisable not to make any present to him at once, but to base my claim on him on the right of an amicable stranger to hospitality. ' iI/hen I had seen all the baggage stowed I went outside and sat at the doorway on a rather rickety mushroom-shaped stool in the cool evening air, waiting for my tea which I wanted bitterly. Pagan came up as usual for tobacco to buy chop with; and after giving it to him, I and the two chiefs, with Gray Shirt acting as interpreter, had a long chat. Of course the first question was, 'vVhy was I there? I told them I was on my way to the factory of H. and C. on the Rembwe. They said they had heard of" Ugumu," i .e., Messrs Hatton and Cookson, but they did not trade direct with them, passing their trade into towns nearer to the Rembwe, which were swindling bad towns, they said; and they got the idea stuck in their heads that I was a trader, a sort of bagman for the firm, and Gray Shirt could not get this idea out, so off one of their majesties went and returned with 272 FROM NCOVI TO ESOON CHAP. twenty-fi ve balls of rubber, which I bought to promote good feeling, subsequently dashing them to vViki , who passed them in at Ndorko when we got there. I also bought some elephant- hair necklaces from one of the chiefs' wives, by exchanging my red silk tie with her for them, and one or two other things. I saw fi sh-hooks would not be of much value because Efoua was not near a big water of any sort; so I held fi sh-hooks and traded handkerchiefs and knives. One old chief was exceedingly keen to do business, and I bought a meat spoon, a plantain spoon, and a gravy spoon off him ; and then he brought me a lot of rubbish I did not want, and I said so, and announced I had fini shed trade for that night. However the old gentleman was not to be put off, and after an unsuccessful attempt to sell me hi s cooking-pots, which were roughly made out of clay, he made energetic signs to me that if I would wait he had got something that he would d ispose of which Gray Shirt said was" good too much." Off he went across the street, and d isappeared into his hut, where be eviden tly had a thorough hu nt for the precious article. One box after another was brought ou t to the light of a bush torch held by one of his wi ves, and there was a great confabula ti on bet ween him and his fa mily of the" I'm sure you had it Jast," II You must have moved it," H N ever touched the thing," sort. A t last it was found, and he brought it across the street to me most carefully . It was a bundle of bark cloth tied round something most carefull y with ti e tie. This being removed, disclosed a layer of rag, which was unwound from round a central article. vV hatever can this be? thinks I ; some rare and valuable object doubt less, let's hope con- nected with Fetish worship, and I anx iously watched its unpack ing; in the end , however, it d isclosed, to my disgust and rage, an old shilli ng razor. The way t he old chief held it out, and the amount of dollars he asked for it, was enough to make any on" believe that I was in such urgen t need of the th ing, that I was at hi s mercy regardin g price. I waved it off with a haughty scorn, and then feeling smi tten by the expres · sion of agonised bewilderment on his face, I dashed him it belt that delighted him, and went inside and had tea to soothe my outraged feel·ings. xu AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY 273 The chiefs made furious raids on the mob of spectators who pressed round the door, and stood with their eyes glued to every crack in the bark or which the hut was made. The next door neighbours on either side might have amassed a cqmfortable competence for their old age, by letting out seats for the circus. Every hole in the side walls had a human eye in it, and I heard new holes being bored in all directions; so I deeply fear the chief, my host, must have found his palace sadly draughty. I felt perfectly safe and content, however, although Ngouta suggested the charming idea that" P'r'aps them M'fetta Fan done sell we." The only grave question I had to face was whether I should take off my boots or not; they were wet through, from wading swamps, &c., and my feet were very sore; but on the other hand, if I took those boots off, I felt confident that I should not be able to get them on again nex(morning, so I decided to lef 'em. As soon as all my men had come in , and established them- selves in the inner room for the night, I curled up among the boxes, with my head on the tobacco sack, and dozed. After about half an hour I heard a row in the street, and looking out,-for I recognised his grace's voice taking a solo part followed by choruses,-I found him in l€gal difficulties about a murder case. An alibi was proved for the time being; that is to say the prosecution could not bring up witnesses - because of the elephant hunt; and I went in for another doze, and the town at last grew quiet. vVaking up again I noticed the ·smell in the hut was violent, from being shut up I suppose, and it had an unmistakably organic origin. Knocking the ash end off the smouldering bush-light that lay burning on the floor, I investigated, and tracked it to those bags, so I took down the biggest one, and carefully noted exactly how the tie tie had been put round its mouth; for these things are important and often mean a lot. I then shook its contents out in my hat, for fear of losing anything of value. They were a human hand, three big toes, four eyes, two ears, and other portions of the human frame. The hand was fresh, the others only so so, and shrivelled. Replacing them I tied the bag up, and hung it up again . I subsequently learnt that although the Fans will eat their T 274 FROM NCOV! TO ESOON CHAP. fellow friendly tribesfolk, yet they like to keep a little some- thing belonging to them as a memento. This touching trait in their character I learnt from Wiki ; and, though it's to their credit, under the circumstances, still it's an unpleasant practice when they hang the remains in the bedroom you occupy, particularly if the bereavement in your host's family has been recent. I did not venture to prowl round Efoua; but slid the bark door aside and looked out to get a breath of fresh air. It was a perfect night, and no mosquitoes. The town, walled in on every side by the great cliff of high black forest, looked very wild as it showed in the starlight, its low, savage-built bark huts, in two hard rows, closed at either end by a guard-hous~. In both guard-houses there was a fire burning, and in their flickering glow showed the forms of sleeping men. Nothing was moving save the goats, which are always brought into th€: special house for them in the middle of the town, to keep them from the leopards, which roam from dusk to dawn. Dawn found us stirring, I getting my tea, and the rest of the party thei r chop, and binding lip anew the loads with Wiki's fresh supple bush-ropes. Kiva amused me much; during our march his costume was exceeding scant, but ,vhen we reached the towns he took from his bag garments, and attired himsel f so resplendently that I feared the charm of his appearance would lead me into one of those dreadful wife palavers which experience had taught me of old to dread: and in the morning time he always devoted some time to re- packing. I gave a big dash to both chiefs, and they -came out with us, most civilly, to the end of their first plantations; and then we took farewell of each other, with many expressions of hope on both sides that we should meet again, and many warnings from them about the dissolute and depraved character of the other towns we should pass through before we reached the Rem bwe. Our second day's march was infinitely worse than the first, for it lay along a series of abruptly shaped hills with deep ravines between them; each ravine had its s,,·amp and each swamp its river. This bit of country must be absolutely im- passable for any human being, black or white, except during XII FROM BOG TO BOG 275 the dry season. There were rep resentatives of the three chief forms of the West African.. bog. The large deep swamps were best to deal with, because they make a break in the forest, and the sun can come down on their surface and bake a crust, over which you can go, if you go quickly. From ex- perience in Devonian bogs, I knew pace \-vas our best chance, and I fancy I earned one of my nicknames among the Fans on these. The Fans went across all right with a rapid striding glide, but the oth"r men erred from excess of caution, and while hesitating as to where was the next safe place to plant their feet, the place that they were standing on went in \vith a glug. Moreover, they would keep together, which was more than the crust would stand. The portly Pagan and the Passenger gave us a fine job in one bog, by sinking in close together. Some of us slashed off boughs of trees and tore off handfuls of hard canna leaves, while others threw them round the sinking victims to form a sort of raft, and then with the aid of bush- rope, of course, they were hauled out. The ,,"orst sort of swamp, and the most frequent hereabouts, is the deep narrow one that has no crust on, because it is too much shaded by the forest. The slopes of the ravines too are usually covered with an undergrowth of shenja, beautiful beyond description, but rigilt bad to go through. I soon learnt to dread seeing the man in front going down hill, or to find myself doing so, for it meant that within the next half hour we should be battling through a patch of shenja. I believe there are few effects that can compare with the beauty of them, with the golden sunlight coming down through the upper forest's branches on to their exquisitely shaped, hard, dark green leaves, making them look as if they were sprinkled with golden sequins. Their long green stalks, which support the leaves and bear little bunches of crimson berries, take every graceful curve imaginable, and the whole affair is free from insects; and when you have said this, you have said all there is to say in favour of shenja, for those long green stalks of theirs are as tough as twisted wire, and the graceful curves go to the making of a net, which rises round you shoulder high, and the hard green leaves when lying on the ground are fearfully slippery. It is not nice going down T 2 FROM NCOVI TO ESOON CHAP. through them, particularly when nature is so arranged that the edge of the bank you are descending is a .rock-wall ten or twelve feet high with a swamp of unknown depth at its foot; this arrangement was very frequent on the second and third ·day's marches, and into these swamps the shenja seemed to want to send you head first and get you suffocated. I tis sti ll less pleasant, however, going up the other side of the ravi ne when you have got through your swamp. You have to fight your way upwards among rough rocks, through thi s hard tough network of stems; and it took it out' of all of us except the Fans. These narrow shaded swamps gave us a world of trouble .and took up a good deal of time. Sometimes the leader of the party would make three or four attempts before he found a ford, going on until the black, batter-like ooze came up round his neck, and then turning back and trying in another place; wh ile the rest of the party sat upon the 'bank until the ford was found, feeling it was unnecessary to throwaway human life, and that the more men there were paddling about in that swamp, the more chance there was that a hole in the bottom of it would be found ; and when a hole is found, the ·discoverer is liable to leave his bones in it. If I happened to be in front, the duty of finding the ford fell on me ; for none of us .after leaving Efoua knew the swamps personally. I was too frightened of the Fan, and too nervous and uncertain of the stuff my other men were made of, to dare show the white feather at anything that turned up. The Fan took my conduct as a matter of course, never having travelled with white men before, or learnt the way some of them require carrying -over swamps and rivers and so on. I dare say I might have taken things eas ier, but I was like the immortal Schmelzle, during that omnibus journey he made on his way to Floetz in the thunder-storm-afraid to be afraid. I am very certain I should have fared very differently had I entered a region .occupied by a powerful and ferocious tribe like the Fan, from some districts on the 'West Coast, where the inhabitants are used to find the white man incapable of personal exertion, requiring to be carried in a hammock, or wheeled in a go-cart ·or a Bath-chair about the streets of their coast town s, depend- XlI A SEVERE DOSE OF STEEL 277 ing for the defence of their settlement on a body of black soldiers, This is not so in _Congo Fran~ais, and I had behind me the prestige of a set of white men to whom fOr the native to say) U You shall not do such and such a thing;)) {( ·You shall not go to such and such a place," would mean that those things would be done, I soon found the name of Hatton and Cookson's agent-general for this district, Mr. Hudson, was one to conjure with among the trading tribes; and the Ajumba, moreover, although their knowledge of white men had been small, yet those they had been accustomed to see were fine specimens, Mr, Fildes, Mr. Cockshut, M, Jacot, Dr. Pelessier, Pere Lejeune, M, Gacon, Mr. Wh ittaker, and that vivacious French official) were not men any man) black or white, would willingly ruffle; and in addition there wa's the memory among the black traders of "that ",hite man IVlacTaggart»)j whom an enterprising trading tribe near Setta Khama had had the hardihood to tackle, shooting him, and then to\\'ing him behind a canoe and slash ing him all o\'er with their knives the while; yet he survived, and tackled them again in a way that must almost pathetically have astonished those simple savages, after the real good work they had put in to the killing of him., Of course it was hard to live up to these ideals, and I do not pretend to have succeeded, or rather that I should have succeeded had the real strain been put on me, P articularly sure am I that I should ne\'er flouri sh under the treatment Mr. MacTaggart habitually receives, I had the pleasure of meeting him on my way home the other day and found him quite convalescent from another overdose of steel. He had gone, about six weeks previously with divers other white men, on a perfectly peaceable mission into a town, TIle treacherous inhabitants, after receiving them kindly and talking the pala\'er, went for Mr. MacTaggart as the party \\'ere returning to their boats, with sharpened cutlasses; took the top off his head, and a large ch ip out of the back of it, and then, e\'idently kno\\'ing their man , proceeded to remO\'e him in his stunned condition into the bush on a door. They there thought of taking off his head thoroughly, to make a J u J u of, The securing of the head of a notably brave man is a g reat desideratum among 'West Coast tribes, and they thought FROM NCOVI TO ESOON CHAP. by securing Mr. MacTaggart's head they would do this, and also remove him from his then sphere of activity, the prevention of gin smuggling. Their plan seems excellent in theory; but I would not stake any money on its having succeeded, even if they had been able to get him well away on that door, which owing to his companions they were not. It is almost as risky to be notoriously brave among a 'vVest African tribe, as it is to be notoriously holy in the East. I know another case in which they desired to collect the head of a gentleman for their J u J u house. I t showed in this case a lofty devotion on their part, for it would have caused them g rave domestic inconvenience to have removed, at one fell swoop, their entire set of tradesmen. Still more did it sho\\' an arti stic feeling of a high order; for the head is a very hand- some one. Though they command my respect as a fellow collector by the care they took in the attempt to collect it by shooting the specimen in the legs, from other standpoints I am very glad they have failed . This idea of the advantage of having a big man's head is somewhat like the Eastern one that I remember reading of in one of Richard Burton's luemoit:s. He was once among some very pious Easterns disguised as a dervish and enjoying such an amount of ad miration from them that he felt safe and content, until one day a nati ve friend came to him, secretly, and advised him to fly, "because the people of this city are desirous of having the sh rine of a very holy man among them-both because of the spiritual advantages it bestows, and the temporal ones arising from pilgrims coming to the town from other places to visit it, and they have decided that you are so very holy, and wise, and learned in the Koran that you will do." Burton left. But to return to that gorilla-land forest. All the ri vers \\'e crossed on the first, second, and third day I was told went into one or other of the branches of the Ogo",e, showing that the long slope of land between the Ogowe and the Remb\\'e is towards the Ogowe. The stone of which the mountains were composed was that same hard black rock that I had found on the Sierra del Cristal, by the Ogowe rapids; on ly hereabouts there was not amongst it those great masses of wh ite quartz, XII P1CK1 NG OUR WAY 279 --- - ------- which are so prominent a feature from Talagouga upwards in the Ogowe valley; neith~r w~ the mountains anything like so high, but they had the same abruptness of shape. They look like very old parts of the same range worn down to stumps by the di sintegrating forces of the torrential rain and sun, and the dense forest growing on them. Frost of course they had not been subj ect to, but rocks, I noticed, were often being somewhat similarly split by rootlets ha\'ing got into some tiny crevice, and by g radual growth enlarged it to a crack. Of our troubles among the timber fal ls on these mountains I h ave already spoken ; and these we re at their worst between Efoua and Egaja. I had suffered a good deal from thirst that day, unboiled water being my ibet and we were a ll \'ery nearly tired ou t with the a thletic sports si nce leaving Efoua:. One thing only we knew about Egaja for sure, and t hat was that not one of us had a friend there, and that it was a t own of extra e\·il repute, so we were not feeling very cheerful when towards evening time we struck its o utermost planta- tions, th€ir immediate vicinity being announced to us by Silence treading full and fair on to a sharp ebony sp ike driven into the narrow path and hurting himself. Fortunately, after we passed this first plantation, we came upon a camp of rubber collectors-four young men; [ got one of them to carry Silence's load and show us the way into the town, when on we went into more plantations. There is nothing more tiresome than finding your path going into a plan tati on, because it fades out in ~he cleared ground, or starts playing games with a lot of other littl e paths that are runn ing about amongst the crops, and no \~iest African path goes straight into a stream or a plantation, and s traight out the other side, so you have a nice time p icking it up again. V.,re were spared a good deal of fine varied walking by our new friend ~he rubber collector; for [ noticed he led us out by a path nearly at right angles to the one by which we had entered. H e then pitched into a pit which was half full of thorns, and which he observed he did not know was there, d emonstrating that an African guide can speak the truth. VVhen he had got out, he handed back S il ence's load and got 280 FRO~! NCOVl TO ESOON CH.\P. a dash of tobacco for his help; he left us to devote the rest of his evening by his forest fire to unthorning himself, while we proceeded to wade a swift, deepish river that crossed the path he told us led into Egaja, and then went across another bit of forest and down hill again. "Oh~ bless those swamps !" thought I, H here's another," but no-not this time. Across the bottom of the steep ravine, from one side to another, lay an enormous tree as a bridge, about fifteen feet abo"e a ri,-er, which rushed beneath it, over a boulder-encumbered bed. I took in the situation at a glance, and then and there I would have changed that bridge for any S\,-amp I ha,-e ever seen, yea, even for a certain" bush-rope bridge in which r once wound myself up like a buzzing fly in a spider's web. I was fearfully tired, and my legs sh ivered under me after the falls and emotions of the previous part of the day, and my boots were slippery with water soaking. The Fans went into the ri ver, and half swam, half ,\"aded across. All the Ajumba, save Pagan, follo,,-ed, and Ngouta got across with their ass istance. Pagan thought he wou ld try the bridge, and I thought I would watch how the thing worked. He got about three yards along it and then sl ipped , but cal;ght the tree with his hands as he fell, and hauled him- sel f back to my side again; then he went down the bank and through the water. This was not calculated to improve one's nerve; I knew by now I had got to go by the bridge, for I saw I was not strong enough in my tired state to fight the water. If only the wretched thing had had its bark on it would have been bette r, but it was bare, bald, and round, and a slip meant death on the rocks belO\\". I rushed it, and reached the other side in safety, ,,-hereby poor Pagan got chaffed about his failure by the others, who said they had gone through the water just to wash their feet. The other side, when we got there, d id not seem much worth reaching, being a swampy fringe at the bottom of a steep hill side, and after a few yards the path turned into a stream or backwater of the ri,'er. It was hedged with thickly pleached bushes, and cO"ered with liquid ,,'ater on the top of sem i-liquid mud. Now and again for a change you had a foot of water on top of fearfully slippery harder mud , and then XII WE ENTER EGAJA we light-hearted ly took headers into the bush, sideways, or sat down; and when it wasJlot proceed ing on the e\'il tenor of its way, like this, it had holes in it ; in fact, I fancy the bottom of the holes was the true level, for it came near being as full of holes as a fi sh ing-net) and it was very quaint to see the man in front, who had been paddling along knee-deep before, nO\l' plop down \I'ith the \I'ater round his shoulders; and getting out of these slippery pockets, \I'hich were sometimes a tight fit, was difficult, H owever that is the path you have got to go by, if you're not wise enough to stop at home ; the little bay of shrub over- g rO\nl swamp fring ing the ri\"er on one side and on the other running up to the mountain side. At last we came to a sandy bank, and on that bank stood Egaja, the to\I"I1 \I'ith an evil name e\"en among the Fan, but \I'here \I'e had got to stay, fair or foul. 'vVe went into it through its palaver house, and soon had the usual ro,,·. I had detected s igns of trouble among my men during the \I'hole day; the Ajumba were tired, and dissatisfied with the Fans ; the Fans were in high feather, openly insolent to Ngouta, and anxious for me to stay in this delightful local ity, and go hunting with them and divers other choice sp irits, whom they assu red me we could easily get to join us at Efoua, l'\gouta kept away from them, and I \I-as worried about him on account of his cold and loss of voice, I kept peace as well as I could, explaining to the Fans I had not enough money \I'ith me nO\\", because I h ad not, when starting, expected such magnificent opportunities to be placed at my di sposal ; and promising to come back next year-a promise I hope to keep- and then \I'e would go and ha\'e a g rand time of it, This state of a party was a dangerous one in which to enter a strange Fan town) where our security lay in ollr bein g united. \ ,Vhen the first burst of Egaja com'ersation began to boil down into somethi ng reasonable, I found that a villainous -looking scoundrel, smeared with soot and draped in a fragment of genuine antique cloth , was a head chief in mourning. H e placed a house at my di sposal , quite a mansion, for it had no less than four apartments, The first one \I'as almost FROM NCOVI TO ESOON CHAP. enti rely occupied by a bedstead frame that was being made up inside on account of the small size of the door. This had to be removed before we could get in with the baggage at all. 'vVhile this removal was being effected with as much damage to the house and the article as if it were a quarter-day affair in England, the other chief arrived. He had been sent for, being away down the river fishing when we arrived. I saw at once he was a very superior man to any of the chiefs I had yet met with. I t was not his attire, remarkable though that was for the district, for it consisted of a gentleman'S black frock-coat such as is given in the ivory bundle, a bright blue fe lt sombrero hat, an ample cloth of Boma check; but his face and general bearing was di stinctive, and very powerful and intell igent; and I knew that Egaja, for good or bad, owed its name to this man, and not to the mere sensual, brutal-looking one. He was exceedingly courteous} orderin g his people to bring me a stool and one for himself, and then a fl y-whisk to battle with the evening cloud of sand- flies. I got Pagan to come and act as interpreter while the rest were stowing the baggage, &c After compliments, " Tell the chief," I said, "that I hear this town of his is thief town." "Better not, s ir/' says Pagan. "Go on," said I, "or I 'll tell him myself." So Pagan did. It was a s<;ld blow to the chief. " Thief town, this highly respectable town of Egaja! a town whose moral conduct in all matters (Shedule) was an example to all towns, called a thief town! Oh, what a wicked world !" I said it was; but I would reserve my opinion as to whether Egaja was a part of the wicked world or a star-like exception, until I had experienced it myself. \~Ie then discoursed on many matters, and I got a great deal of interesting fetish information out of the chief, which was valuable to me, because the whole of this distri ct had not been in contact with white culture; and altogether I and the chief became great fri ends. Just when I was going in to have my much-desired tea, he brought me hi s mother-an old lady, evidently very bright and able, but, poor woman, with the most disgusting hand and xu MEDICAL PRACTICE a rm I have ever seen , I am ashamed to say I came very near being sympathetically sick in the African manner on the spot. I felt I could not attend to it, and have my tea after- wards, so I directed one of the canoe-shaped little tubs, used for beating up the manioc in, to be brought and filled with hot water, and then putting into it a heavy dose of Candy's flui d, I made her sit down and lay the whole arm in it, and went and had my tea, As soon as I had done I went outside, and getting some of the many surrounding ladies to hold bush- lights, I examined the case, The whole hand was a mass of yellow pus, streaked with sanies, large ulcers were burrowing into the fore-arm, while in the ann-pit was a big abscess, I opened the abscess at once, and then the old lady frightened me nearly out of my wits by gently subsiding, I thought dying; but I soon found out merely goi ng to s leep, I then washed the abscess well out, and having got a lot of baked plantains, I made a big poultice of them, mixed \\'ith boiling water and more Candy in the tub, and laid her arm right in this; and propping her up all round and covering her over with cloths I requisitioned from her son, I left her to have her nap while I went into the history of the case, which IVas that some forty- eight hours ago she had been wading along the bank, catching crawfish, and had been stung by "a fi sh like a snake"; so I presume the ulcers were an old-standing palaver. The hand had been a good deal torn by the creature, and the pain and swelling had been so great she had not had a minute's sleep since, As soon as the poultice got chilled I took her arm out and cleaned it again, and wound it round \vith dressing, and had her ladyship carried bodily, still asleep, into her hut, and after rousing her up, giving her a dose of that fine preparation, pit, crotonis Cltllt ltydra1'gi, saw her tucked up on her own plank bedstead for the night, sound asleep again, The chief was very anxious to have some pills too; so I gave him some, "'ith firm injunctions only to take one at the first time, I knew that that one would teach him not to take more than one for ever after, better than I could do if I talked from June to January, Then all the afflicted of Egaja turned up, and wanted medical advice, There was evidently a good stiff epidemic o( the yaws about; lots of cases of dum with the FROM NCOVI TO E500:-l CHAP_ ,-arious symptoms; ulcers of course galore; a man with a bit of a broken spear head in an abscess in the thigh; one which I believe a professional en thusiast would call a "lovely case" of fil aria, the entire white of one eye being full of the active little worms and a ridge of surplus population migrating across the bridge of the nose into the other eye, under the sk in, looking like the bridge of a pair of spectacles. It was past eleven before [ had anyth ing like done, and my men had long been sound asleep, but the chief had conscientiously sat up and seen the thi ng through. He then went and fetched some rolls of bark cloth to put on my plank, and I gave him a handsome cloth I happened to have with me, a couple of knives, and some heads of tobacco and wished him good-night ; blockading my bark door, and picking my way over my sleeping Ajumba into an inner apartment which I also blockaded, hoping I had done with Egaja for some hours. No such thing. At 1.45 the whole town was roused by the frantic ye ll s of a woman. I judged there was one of my beauties of Fans mixed up in it, and there was, and after paying damages, got back again by 2.30 A.M., and off to sleep again instan tly. At four sharp, whole to\m of Egaja plunged into 'emotion, and worse shindy. I suggested to the Ajumba they shomld go out; but no, they didn't care a roll' of pins if one of our Fans did get killed, so I went, recogn ising IZiva's voice in high expostulation . IZiva, it seems, a long time ago had a transaction in re a tooth of ivory with a man who, unfortunately, happened to be in this town to-night, and rZiva owed the sa id man a coat. I Kiva, it seems, has been spending the whole evening demonstrating to his cred itor that, had he only known they were to meet, he u-ould have brought the coat with him-a particularly beautiful coat-and the reQ-son he has not paid it before is that he has mislaid the creditor's address. The creditor says he has called repeatedly at Kiva's village, that notorious M'fetta, and K iva has ne,'er been at home; and mOreo,-er that Ki"a>s wife (one of them) stole a yellow dog of g reat value from his (the creditor's) canoe. Kiva says, women wi ll be women, and he had gone off to sleep thinking 1 An European coat or its equivalent value is one of the constant quantities in an i\"ory bundle. Xli A CASE I N BA N KRUPTCY the affair had blown over and the bill renewed for the time being. The creditor had !]Qt gone to sleep; but sat up think- ing the affair over and remembered many cases, all cited in full, of how Kiva had failed to meet his debts; also Kiva's brother on the mother's side and uncle ditto ; and so has decided to foreclose fC'Jrthwith on the debtor 's estat~, and as the estate is represented by and consists of Kiva's person, to take and seize upon it and eat it. It is always highly interesting to observe the germ of any o f our own institutions ex isting in the culture of a lower race Nevertheless it is trying to be hauled out of one's sleer_ in the middle of the night, and plunged into this study Evidently this was a trace of an early form of the Bank- ruptcy Court; the court which clears a man of his debt, beillg here represented by the kn ife and the cooking pot; the white- washing, as I bel ieve it is termed with us, a lso shows, only it is not the debtor who is whitewashed, but the creditors doing themselves over with white clay to celebrate the removal o f their enemy from his sphere of meretricious activity. This inversion may arise from the fact that whitewash ing a creditor who was about to be cooked would be unwise, as the stuff would boil off the bits and spoil the g ravy. There is always some fragment of sound sense underl y ing Afri can institutions. Kiva was, when I got out, tied up, talking nineteen to the dozen; and so was everyone else; and a lady was working up whi te clay in a pot. I dare say I ought to have rushed at him and cut his bonds, and killed people in a general way with a revoh·er, and then flown with my band to the bush; only my band eviden tl y had no fl y ing in them, being tucked up in the hut p retending to be asleep, and uninterested in tJ,e affair; and although I could have abandoned the band wi thou t a pang just then, I could not so light·hearted ly fl y alone with Kiva to the bush and leave my fishes; so I shouted Azuna to the Bankruptcy Court, and got a F an who spoke trade English to come and interpret for me; and from him I learnt the above stated o utline of the proceedings up to the time. Regarding the original iniquity of Kiva, my other Fans held the opinion that the old Scotch lady had regard ing certain passages in the 286 FROM NCOVI TO ESOON CHAP. history of the early Jews-that it was a long time ago, and habelings it was no true. Fortunately for the reader it is impossible for me to give in full detail the proceedings of the Court. I do not think if the whole of 1\1r. Pitman's school of shorthand had been there to take them down the thing could possibly have been done in word-writing. If the late Richard Wagner, however, had been present he could have scored the performance for a full orchestra; and with all its \l'eird grunts and roars, and pistol-like finger clicks, and its elongated words and thigh slaps, it would have been a masterpiece. I got my friend the chief on my side; but he explained he had no jurisd iction, as neither of the men belonged to his town; and I explained to him, that as the proceedings were taking place in his town he had a right of jurisdiction ipso facto. The Fan could not translate this phrase, so we gave it the chief raw, and he seemed to relish it, and he and I then cut into the affair together, I looking at him with admiration and approval when he was say ing his say, and after his" Azuna" had produced a patch of s il ence he could move .his tongue in, and he similarly regarding me during my speech for the defence. Vie neither, I expect, understood each other, and we had trouble with our client, who would keep pleading" l\'ot gu ilty," which was absurd. Anyhow we prod uced our effect, my success arising from my concluding my s peech with the an nouncement that I would g ive the cred itor a book on Hatton and Cookson for the coat, and I would deduct it from Kiva's pay. B'ut, said the Court: "Vie look your mouth and it be sweet mouth, but with Hatton and Cookson we can have no trade." This was a blow to me. Hatton and Cookson was my big J u Ju, and it was to their sub-factory on the Rembwe that I was bound. On inquiry I elicited another cheerful little fact, which was they cou ld not deal with Hatton and Cookson, because there was" blood war on the path that way." The Court said they would take a book on Holty, but with Holt)', i.e. Mr. John Holt, I had no deposit of money, and I did not feel justified in issuing cheques on him, knowing also he could not feel amiable towards wandering scientists, after what he had XII A QUESTION OF CHARACTER recently gone through with one. Not that I doubt for one minute but that his represen tatives would have honoured my book; for the generosityand helpfulness of \'Vest African traders is unbounded and long-suffering. But I did not like to encroach on it, all the more so from a feeling that I might ne\'er get through to refund the money. So at last I paid the equivalent value of the coat out of my own trade-stuff; and the affair was regarded by all parties as satisfactorily closed by the time the gray dawn was coming up over the forest ,,·all. I went in again and slept in snatches until I got my tea about seven, and then turned out to hurry my band out of Egaja. This I did not succeed in doing until past ten. One row succeeded another with my men; but I was determined to get them out of that town as quickly as possible, for I had heard so much from perfectly reliable and experienced people regarding the treacherousness of the Fan. I feared too that more cases still would be brought up against Kiva, from the resume of hi s criminal career I had had last night, and I knew it \\"as very doubtful whether my other three Fans were any better than he. There was his grace's little murder affair anI)" languishing for want of evidence owing to the witnesses for the prosecution being out elephant-hunting not very far away; and Wiki was pleading an alibi, and a twin brother, in a bad wife palaver in this town. I really hope for the sake. of Fan morals at large, that I did engage the three worst villains in M'fetta, and that M'fetta is the worst town in all Fan land , inconvenient as this arrangement was to me personally_ Anyhow, I felt su re my Pappenheimers wou ld take a lot of beat- ing for good solid crime, among any tribe anywhere. More- over, the Ajumba wanted meat, and the Fans, they said, offered them human. I saw no human meat at Egaja, but the Ajumba seem to think the Fans eat nothing else, which is a silly prejudice of theirs, because the Fans do. I think in this case the Ajumba thought a lot of smoked flesh offered \\-as human. It may have been; it was in neat pieces; and again, as the Captain of the late ss. Sparrow would say," it mayn't." But the Ajumba have a horror of cannibalism, and I honestly believe never practise it, e"en for fetish affairs, which is a rare thing in a \'Vest African tribe where sacrificial oSS FROM NCOVl TO ESOON CHAP. and ceremonial cannibalism is nearl y universal. A nyhow t he Ajumba loudly decl ared the Fans were" bad men too much ," which was im politic under ex isting circumstances, and in- excusable, because it by no means arose from a courageous defiance of them; but the , ,vest African! Well! " he's a de\'il and an ostrich and an orphan child in one," The chief was very ",nxious for me to stay and rest, but as his mother was doin g wonderfully well, and the other \\'omen seemed quite to understand my directions regardin g her, I d id not feel inclined to risk it. The o ld lady's farewell of me was pecu liar: she took my hand in her t\\'O, turned it palm upwards, and spat on it. I do, not know whether this is a constant form of g reeti ng amoNg the Fan; I fancy not. Dr. Nassau, who explained it to me when I saw him again down at Earaka, said the spitting was merely an accidental by"product of the performance, which consisted in blowing a blessing; and as Th appened on this custom twice aftef\\'ards, I feel sure from observation he is right. The two ch iefs saw us courteous ly out of the town as far as where the river crosses the out-going path again, and the blue-hatted one gave me some charms " to keep my foot in path," and the mourning chief lent us his son to see us through the lines of fo rti ficatio n of the plantation, I gave them an equal dash, and in answer to their question as to ,,'hether I had found E gaja a th ief-town, T said that to call Egaja a thief- town was rank perju ry, for I had not lost a thing while in it; and we parted with mutual expression of esteem and hopes for another meeting at an early date, T he defences of the fine series of plantations of Egaja on this side were most in tri cate, to judge from the zigzag course our gu ide led us through them, He explained they had to be because of the character of the towns towards the Rem bwe, After lis tening to this young man, I really beg",n to doubt that the Cities of the Plain had real ly been destroyed, and wondered whether some future rev ision committee wi ll not put tran s- ported for destroyed, This young man certainly hit off the c haracter of Sodom and Gomorrah to the life, in describi ng the towns towards the Rembwe, though he had ne\'er heard Sodom and Gornorrah named. H e assured me I should see XII NORTHWESTWARD HO! the difference between them and Egaja the Good, and I thanked him and gave him~is dash when we parted; but told him as a friend, I feared some alteration must take place, and some time elapse before he saw a regular rush of pilgrim worshippers of virtue coming into even Egaja the Good, though it stood just as good a chance and better than most towns I had seen in Africa. We went on into the gloom of the Great Forest again; that forest that seemed to me without end,. wherein, in a lazy, hazy -minded sort of way, I expected to wander through by day and drop in at night to a noisy savage town for the rest of my days. We climbed up one hill, skirted its summit, went through our athletic sports over sundry timber falls, and struck down into the ravine as usual. But at the bottom of that ravi ne, which was exceeding steep, tan a little river free from swamp. As I was wading it I noticed it had a peculiarity that dis- tinguished it fn,m all the other rivers we had come through; and then and there I sat down on a boulder in its midst and hauled out my compass. Yes, by A llah! it's going north- west and bound as we are for Rembwe River. I went out the other side of that river with a lighter heart than I went in, and shouted the news to the boys, and they yelled and sang as we v·,rent on our way. All along this bit of country we had seen quantities of rubber vines, and between Egaja and Esoon we came across quantities of rubber being collected. Evidently there was a big camp of rubber hunters out in the district very busy. Wiki and Kiva did their best to teach me the trade. Along each side of the path we frequently saw a ring of stout bush rope, raised from the earth on pegs about a foot to eighteen inches. On the ground in the middle stood a calabash, into which the ends of the pieces of rubber vine were placed, the other ends being supported by the bush rope ring. Round the outside of some of these rings was a slow fire, which just singes the tops of the bits of rubber vine as they project over the collar or ring, and causes the milky juice to run out of the lower end into the calabash, g iving out as it does so a strong ammoniacal smel l. When the fire was al ight there U FROM NCOVI T O ESOON CHAP. would be a gro up of rubber collectors sitting round it watch- ing the cooking operations, removing those pieces that had run d ry and placing others, from a pile at their side, in position. On either side of the path we continually passed pieces of rubber vine cut into lengths of some two feet or so, and on the top one or two leaves plaited together, or a p iece of bush rope tied into a knot, which indicated whose property the p il e was. The method of collection employed by the Fan is exceed- FANS WITH IVORY AND RUBBER. ingly wastefu l, because this fool of a vegetable La1tdolpltia jlo1'1'da (Ovarieusis) does not know how to send up suckers from its root, but insists on starting elaborately from seeds only, I do not, however, see any reasonable hope of getting them to adopt more economical methods, The attempt made by the English houses, when the rubber trade was opened up in 1883 on the Gold Coast, to get the more tractable nati ves there to collect by incis ions only, h as fai led; for in the early days a man could get a load of rubber almost at his own door on tbe Go ld Coast, and now he has to go fifteen days' journey XII HOW BLOOD FEUDS BEG I N inland for it. \"'hen a Fan town has exhausted the rubber in its vicinity, it migrates, bag...and baggage, to a new part of the forest. The young unmarried men are the usual rubber hunters. Parties of them go out into the forest, wandering about in it and camping under shelters of boughs by night, for a month and more at a time, during the dry seasons, until they have got a sufficient quantity together; then they return to their town, and it is manipulated by the women, and finally sold, either to the white trader, in districts where he is within reach, or to the M'pongwe trader who travels round buying it and the collected ivory and ebony, like a Norfolk higgler. In di stricts like these I was in, remote from the M'pongwe trader, the Fans carry the rubber to the town nearest to them that is in contact with the black trader, and sell it 'to the inhabitants, who in their turn resell it to their next town, until it reaches him. This passing down of the FUbber and ivory gives rise between the various towns to a series of commercial complications which rank with woman palaver for the production of rows; it "being the sweet habit of these Fans to require a life for a life, and to regard one life as good as another. Also rubber trade and wife palavers sweetly intertwine, for a man on the kill in re a wife palaver knows his best chance of getting the life from the village he has a grudge against lies in catching one of that village's men when he may be out alone rubber hunting. So he does this thing, and then the men from the victim's vill age, go and lay for a rubber hunter, from the killer's village; and then of course the men from the killer's village go and lay for rubber hunters from victim number one's village, and thus the blood feud rolls down the vaulted chambers of the ages, so that you, dropping in on affairs, cannot see one end or the other of it, and frequently the people concerned have quite forgotten what the killing was started for. Not that this dis- courages them in the least. Really if Dr. Nassau is right, .and these Fans are descendants of Adam and Eve, I expect the Cain and Abel killing palaver is still kept going among them. \~I iki, being great on bush rope, gave me much information regarding rubber, showing me the various other vines besides U 2 FROM Ncovr TO ESOON CHAP. the true rubber vine, whose juice, mingled with the true sap by the collector when in the forest, adds to the weight; a matter of importance, because rubber is bought by weight. The other adulteration gets done by the ladies in the villages whem the collected sap is handed over to them to prepare for the markets. This preparation consists of boiling it in water slightly, and adding a little salt, which causes the gummy part to separate and go to the bottom of the pot, where it looks like a thick cream. The water is carefully poured off this deposit, which is t hen taken out and moulded, usually in the hands; but I have seen it run into moulds made of small calabashes with a stick or piece of iron passing through, so that when the rubber is set this can be withdrawn. A hole being thus left the balls can be threaded on to a stick, usually five on one stick, for convenience of transport. It is during the moulding process that most of the adulteration gets in. Down by the side of many of the streams there is a white chalky-Iookiflg clay which is brought up into the villages, powdered up, and then hung up over the fire in a basket to attain . a uniform smuttiness; it is then worked into the rubber when it is being made up into balls. Then a good chunk of Koko, A1'ZI1IZ esculeNtu", (Koko is better than yam, I may remark, because it is heavier), also smoked approxi- mately the right colour, is often placed in the centre of the rubber ball. In fact, anything is put there, that is hopefully regarded as likely to deceive the white trader. I once overheard a long discussion between two ladies: "I ahvays clay my rubber up well/' says number one. ( I think/' says number two, " a bit of yam is better, with just a coat of rubber outside, then he hop good too much when Mr.-- frows him for floor. " They did not convince each other as to the superiority of their individual methods, but became very friendly over the foolishness of a mutual friend, who both clayed and yammed her rubber to such an extent that when Mr.-- "frowed him for floor he done squat." Mr.-- then cut him open and "frowed" both the pieces at her head-a performance that raised Mr.-- in their esteem, as it demon- strated commercial intelligence, a thing universally admired XII INGENUITIES OF ADULTERATION down here. So great is the adulteration, that most of the traders have to cut each_ ball open. Even the Kinsembo rubber, wh ich is put up in clusters of bits shaped like little thimbles formed by rolling pinches of rubber between the thumb and finger, and which one would think difficult to put anything inside of, has to be cut, because" the simple children of nature" who collect it and bring it to that" swindling white trader" struck upon the ingenious notion that little pieces of wood shaped like the thimbles and coated by a dip in rubber were excellent add itions to a cluster. The pure rubber, when it is made, looks like putty, and has the same dusky-white colour; but, owing to the balls being kept in the huts in baskets in the smoke, and in wicker-work cages in t he muddy pools to soak up its much waste · as possible before going into ·t he hands of the traders, they get almost inky in colour. CHAPTER XIII FROM ESOON TO AGON]O In which the Voyager sets forth the beauties of the way from Esoon to N'dorko, and gives some account of the local Swamps. OUR next halting place was Esoon,.which received us with the usual row, but kindly enough; and endeared itsel f to me by knowing the Rembwe, and not just waving the arm in the air, in any direction, and saying " Far, far plenty bad people live for that side," as the other towns had done. Of course they stuck to the bad people part of the legend; but I was getting quite callous as to the moral character of new ac- quaintances, feeling sure that for good solid murderous rascality several.of myoid Fan acquaintances, and even my own party, would take a lot of beating; and yet, one and all, they had behaved well to me. I am glad to see from my diaries that I knew this at the time; for I see in my Cameroon journal an entry" \;V ish to Allah the Fans were in thi s country; have been inquiring in vain for a cannibal tribe to associate with, but there is not one round here "; but that's another story. Esoon gave me to understand that of all the Sod oms and Gomorrahs that town of Egaja was an easy first, and it would hardly believe we had come that way. Still Egaja had dealt with us well. However I took less interest-except, of course, as a friend, in some details regarding the criminal career of Chief Blue-hat of Egaja-in the opinion of Esoon regarding the country we had survived, than in the information it had to impart regarding the country we had got to survi\·e on our way to the Big River, which now no longer meant the Ogowe, but the Rembwe, I meant to reach one of Hatton and Cookson's sub-factories there, but-strictly between ourselves-I knew no more at what town that factory was than a Kindergarten eM. XIII BLOOD WAR ON THE PATH" 295 Board School child does. I did not mention this fact; and a casual observer might have thought that I had spent my youth in that factory, when I directed my inquiries to the finding out the very shortest route to it. Esoon shook its head. "Yes, it was close, but it was imposs ible to reach Uguma's factory." " \iI/hy?" "There was blood war on the path." I said it was no war of mine. But Esoon said, such was the appalling depravity of the next town on the road, that its inhabitants lay in wait at day with loaded guns and shot on s ight any one coming up the Esoon road, and that at night they tied strings with bells on across the road and shot on hearing- them. Noone llad been killed since the first party of Esoonians were fired on at long range, because no one had gone that \i'ay; but the next door town had been heard by people who had been out in the bush at night, blazing down the road when the bells were tinkled by wild animals. Clearly that road was not yet really healthy. The Duke, \vho as I have said before, was a fine courageous fellow, ready to engage in any undertaking, suggested I should go up the road-alone by myself-fi rst-a mile ahead of the party-and the next town, perhaps, might not shoot at sight, if they happened to notice I was something queer; and I might explain things, and then the rest of the party would follow. " There's nothing like dash and courage, my dear Duke," I said, "even if one display it by deputy, so ~his plan does you great credit; but as my knowledge of this charming language of yours is but small, I fear I might create a wrong impression in that town, and it might think I had kindly brought them a present of eight edible heathens-you and the remainder of my followers, you understand." My men saw this was a real danger, and this was the only way I saw of excusing myself. It is at such a moment as this that the Giant's robe gets, so to speak, between your legs and threatens to trip you up. Going up a forbidden road, and exposing yourself as a pot shot to ambushed natives would be jam and fritters to Mr. MacTaggart, for example; but I am not up to that form yet. So I determined to leave that road severely alone, and circumnavigate the next town by a road that leaves Esoon going \N.K'vV., which struck the Rembwe by N'dorko, FROM ESOON TO AGON]O CH.'-\P. I was told, and then follow up the bank of the river until I picked up the sub-factory. Subsequent experience did not make one feel inclined to take out a patent for this plan, bu t at the time in Esoon it looked nic€ enough. Some few of the more highly cultured inhabitants here could speak trade Eng lish a little, and had been to the Rembwe, and were quite intelligent about the whole affair. They had seen white men. A vi llage they formerly occupied nearer the Rembwe had been burnt by them, on account of a somethi ng that had occurred to a Catholic priest who visited it. They were, of course, none of them personally mi xed up in this sad affair, so could g ive no details of what had befallen the priest. They knew also" the j)/love," which was a great bond of union between us. "Was I a wife of them _~Jovewhite man," they inquired-" or them other white man? J) I civilly said them ivlove men were my tribe, and they ought to have known it by the look of me. They discussed my points of re- semblance to " the J1lfove white man," and I am ashamed to say I could not forbear from smiling, as I distinctly recognised my friends from the very racy descript ion of their personal appea r- ance and tricks of manner gi"en by a li vely E soonian belle who l~ad certainly met them. So content and happy did I become under these soothing influences, that I actually took off my boots, a thing I had quite got out of the hab it of doing, and had them dried. I wanted to have them rubbed with palm o il, but I found, to my surpri se, that there was no palm o il to be had, the tree being absent, or scarce in this region, so I had to content myself with having them rubbed with a piece of animal fat instead. I chaperoned my men, wh ile among the ladies of Esoon-a forward set of minxes-with the vig ilance of a drago'n ; and decreed, like the Mikado of Japan, "that who- soever leered or winked, unless connubially linked, should forthwith be beheaded," have their pay chopped, I mean; and as they were beginning to smell their pay, they were careful, , and we got through Esoon without one of my men going into ' jail; no mean performance when YOll remember that every man had a past-to put it mildly. Fika remained behind here, the others promising to bring back his pay bundle with them on their. return journey home. I thi nk Fika heard XIII MANGROVES AHEAD 297 rumours in Esoon of some gentlemen he had met before and was not keen to meet again, being just then at N'dorko, so I parte<;l with him and Esoon, with suitable dashes, in peace. Esoon is not situated like the other towns, with a ",vamp and the forest close round it; but it is built on the side of a fairly cleared ravine among its phvntain groves. \Mhen you are on the southern side of the ravine, you can see Esoon looking as if it were hung on the hillside before you. You then go through a plantation down into the little ri ver, and up into the town-one long, broad, clean-kept s treet. Leaving Esoon you go on up the hill through another plantation to the summit. Immediately after leaving the town we struck westwards; and when we got to the top of the next hill we had a view that showed us we were deaIing with another type of country. The hills to the westward are lower, and the valleys between them broader and less heavily forested, or rather I should say forested with smaller sorts of timber. A ll our paths took us during the early part of the day up and down hills, through swamps and little ri vers, all flowing Rembwewards. A bout the middle of the afternoon, when we had got up to the top of a high hill , after having had a terrible time on a timber fall of the first magni tude, into which four of us had fall en, I of course for one, I saw a sight that made my heart stand sti-ii. Stretching away to the west and north, winding in and out among the feet of the now isolated mound-like mountains, was that never to be mistaken black-green forest swamp of man- grove; doubtless the fringe of the River Rembwe, which evi- dently comes much further inland than the mangrove belt on the Ogowe. This is reasonable and as it should be, though it surprised me at the time; for the great arm of the sea which is called the Gaboon is really a fjord, just like Bonny and Opobo rivers, with severa l rivers falling into it at its head, and this fjord brings the sea water further inland. I n addition . to thi s the two rivers, the 'Como (Nkama) and Rembwe that fall into this Gaboon, with several sma ller rivers, both bring down an inferior quantity of fresh water, and that at nothing like the tearing, tide-beating back pace of the Ogowe. As my brother would say, " I t's perfectly simple if you think FROM ESOON TO AGONJO CHAP. about it;" but thinking is not my strong point. Anyhow I was glad to see the mangrove-belt; all the gladder because I did not then know how far it was inland from the sea, and also because I was fool enough to think that a long line I could see, running E. and VV. to the north of where I stood, was the line of the Rembwe river; 'which it was not, as we soon found out. Cheered by this pleasing prospect, we marched on forgetfu l of our scratches, down the side of the hill, and down the foot slope of it, until we struck the edge of the swamp. We skirted this for some mile or so, going N .E . Then we struck into the swamp, to reach what we had regarded as the Rembwe river. H Nature was at its ghastliest," as C/tambers's jWagazi"e said, and hurt the feelings of the locality by saying, of the Oil Rivers scenery. We found our- selves at the edge of that open line we had seen from the lTIountain. Not standing, because you don't so much as try to stand on mang rove roots unless you are a born fool , and then you don't stand long, but clinging, like so many monkeys, to the net of aerial roots which surrounded us, looking blankly at a lake of ink-black slime. It was half a mile across, and sqme miles long. \Ne could not see either the "'est or east termination of it, for it lay like a rotten serpent twisted between the mangroves. It never entered into our heads to try to cross it, for when a swamp is too deep for mangrov€s to grow in it," No bottom lib for them dam ting," as a Kruboy once said to me, anent a small specimen of this sort of ornament to a landscape. But we just looked round to see which direc- tion we had better take. Then I observed that the roots, aerial and othenvise, were coated in 111ud , and had no leaves on them, for a foot above our heads. Next I noticed that the surface of the mud before us had a sort 0f quiver running through it, and here and there it exhibited s",ell ings on its s urface, which rose in one place and fell in another. No need for an old coaster like me t5 look at that sort of thing twice to know what it meant, and feeling it was a situation more suited to Mr. Stanley than myself, I attempted to emulate his methods and addressed my men. "Boys," said I, "this beastly hole is tidal, and the tide is coming in. As it took us two hours to get to this sainted swamp, it's time we started XII1 WHY DID I COME TO Af'RICA? 299 out, one time, and the nearest way. It's to be hoped the practice we have acquired ilL!l?-angrove roots in coming, will enable us to get up sufficient pace to get out on to dry land before we are all drowned." The boys took the hint. Fortu- nately one of the Ajumbas had been down in Ogowe, it was Gray Shirt, who" sabed them tide palaver." The rest of them, and the Fans, did not know what tide meant, but Gray Shirt hustled them along and I followed, deeply regretting that my ancestors had parted prematurely with prehensile tails for four limbs, particularly when two of them are done up in boots and are not sufficient to enable one to get through a man- grove swamp network of slimy roots rising out of the water, and swinging lines of aerial ones coming down to the \'Vater a fa mangrove, with anything approaching safety. Added to' these joys were any quantity of mangrove flies, a broiling hot sun, and an atmosphere three quarters solid stench from the pu- trifying ooze all round us. For an hour and a half thought I , \;Yhy did I come to Africa, or why, having come, did I not know when I was well off and stay in Glass ? Before these problems were settled in my mind we were close to the true land again, with the water under us licking lazily among the roots and over our feet. \;Ye did not make any fuss about it, but we meant to stick to dry land for some time, and so now took to the side of a hill that seemed like a g reat bubble comi ng out of the swamp, and bore stead ily E . until we found a path. This path, according to the nature of paths in this country, promptly took us into another swamp, but of a different kind to our last-a knee-deep affair, full of beautiful palms and stran g·e water plants, the names whereof I know not. There was just one part where that abomination, pa1ldanus, had to be got through, but, as swamps go, it was not at all bad. I ought to mention that there were leeches in it, lest I may be thought too enthusiastic ovel·· its charms. But the great point was that the mountains we got to on the other side of it, were a good sol id ridge, running, it is true, E. and Vi/., while we wanted to go N. ; still on we went waiting for develop- ments, and watching the great line of mangrove-swamp spreading along below us to the left hand , seeing many of 300 FROM ESOON TO AGON]O CHAP. the lines in its dark face, which betokened more of those awesome slime lagoons that we had seen enough of at close quarters. About four o'clock we struck some more plantations, and passing throu gh these, came to a path running north-east, down which we went. I must say the forest scenery here was superbly lovely . Along this mountain side cliff to the man- g rove-swamp the sun could reach the soil, owing to the steepness and abruptness and the changes of curves of the g round; while the soft steamy air whith came up off the swamp swathed everything, and although unpleasantly strong in smell to us, was yet evidently highly agreeable to the vegetation. Lovely wine palms and ralia palms, look ing as if they had been grown under glass, so deliciously green and profuse was their feather-like foliage, intermingled withgiantred woods, and lovely dark glossy g reen lianes, blooming in wreaths and festoons of white and mauve flowers, wh ich gave a glorious wealth of beauty and colour to the scene. Even the monotony of the mangrove-belt aloNgside gave an additional charm to it, like the frame round a picture. As . lve passed on, the ridge turned N. and the mangrove line narrowed between the hill s. Our path now ran east and more in the middle of the forest, and the cool shade was charm- ing after the heat we had had earlier in the day. \,Ve crossed a lovely little stream coming down the hillside in a cascade; and then our path plunged into a beautiful valley. Vie had g limpses through the trees of an amphitheatre of blue mist- veiled mountains coming down in a crescent before us, and on all sides) save due west where the mangrove-swamp came in. Never shall I forge t the exceeding beauty of that valley, the foliage of the trees round us, the delicate wreaths and festoons of climbing plants, the graceful delicate plumes of the palm trees, interlacing among each other, and showing through a ll a background of soft, pale, purple-blue mountains a nd forest, not really far away, as the practised eye knew, but only made to look so by the mist, which has this trick of giving suggestion of immense space \dthout destroying the beauty of detail. Those African misty forests have the same marvellous distinctive quality that Turner gives one in his XIII INTO THE DEPTHS 301 greatest pictures. I am no artist, so I do not know exactly what it is, but I see it is there. I luxuriated in the ex- quisite beauty of that valley-;-Tittle thinking or knowing what there was in it besides beauty, as A llah " in mercy hid the book of fate." On we went among the ferns and flowers until we met a swamp, a diffe ren t kind of swamp to those we had heretofore met, save the little one last mentioned. This one was much larger, and a gem of beauty; but we had to cross it. It was completely furnished wi th characteristic flora. Fortunately when we got to its edge we saw a woman crossing before us, but unfortunately she did not take a fancy to our appearance, and instead of staying and having a chat about the state of the roads, and the shortest way to N'dorko, she bolted away across the swamp. I noticed' she carefully took a course, not the shortest, although that course immersed her to her arm-pits. In we went after her, and when things were getting unpleasantly deep, and feeling highly uncertain under foot, we found there was a great log of a tree under the water which, as we had seen the lady's care at this point, we deemed it advisable to walk on. All of us save one, need I say that one was myself, effected this with safety. As for me, when I was at the beginning of the submerged bridge, and busi ly laying about in my mind for a definite opinion as to whether it was better to walk on a slippy tree trunk bridge you could see, or on one you could not, I was hurled off by that inexorable fa te that demands of me a personal acquaintance with flu vial and paludial g round deposits; where-upon I took a header, and a m thereby able to inform the ,,"orld, that there is between fifteen and twenty feet of water each side of that log. I con- scientiously went in on one side, and came up on the other. The log, I conjecture, is dum or ebony, and it is some fifty feet long; an yhow it is some so rt of wood that won't float. I really cannot be expected, by the most exigent of scientifi c friend s, to go botanising under water without a proper outfit. Gray Shirt says it is a bridge across an under-swam p ri ver. Having survived thi s and reached the opposite bank, we shortly fell in "'ith a party of men and women, who were t aking, they said, a parcel of rubber to Holty's. They told us 302 F ROM ESOO N TO AGO:-l]O CHAP. N'dorko was quite close, and that the plantations we saw before us were its outermost ones, but spoke of a swamp, a bad swamp. \~Ie knew it, we said, in the foolishness of our hearts thinking they meant the one we had just forded, and leaving them resting, passe.,) on o"Ur way; half-a-mile further on we were wiser and sadder, for then we stood on the rim of one of the biggest swamps I have ever seen sou th of the Rivers. It stretched away in all directions, a great sheet of filthy water, out of which sprang gorgeous marsh plants, in islands, great banks of screw pine, and coppices of wine palm, with their lovely fronds reflected back by the still , mirror-like water, so that the re fl ection was as vivid as the reality, and above all remarkable was a plant! new and strange to me, whose pale- g reen stem came up out of the water and then spread out in a fl attened surface, th in, and in a peculiarly gracefu l curve. This fl attened surface had growing out from it leaves, the size, shape and colour of lily of the valley leaves ; until I saw th is thing I had held the wi ne palm to be the queen of g race in the vegetable kingdom, but th is new beauty qui te sur- passed her. Our path went straight into thi s swamp over the black rocks forming its rim) in an imperati ve, no alternative, "Come- along-this-way" style. Singlet, who was leadin g, carrying a good load of bottled fi sh and a gorilla specimen, went at it like a man, and disappeared before the eyes of us close follo wing him, then and there down through the water. H e came up, thanks be, but his load is down there now, worse luck. Then I sa id we must get the rubber carriers who were coming this way to show us the ford; and so we sat down on the bank a tired, disconsolate, dilapidated-look ing row, until they arrived . \~hen they came up they did not plunge in forthwith; but leisurely set about making a most nerve-shaki ng set of pre- parations, taking off their clothes, and forf)"ling them into bundles, which, to my hon"or, they put on the tops of their heads. The women carried the rubber on their backs still, but rubber is none the worse for being under water. The men went in first, each hold ing his gun high above his head. They skirted the bank before they struck out into the swamp, and 1 Specimen placed in Herbarium at Kew. XllI A COLLAR OF LEECHES 30 3 were followed by the women and by our party, and soon we were all up to our chins. vVe were two hours and aquarter passing that swamp. was one hour and three.-quarters ; but I made good weather of it, closely following the rubber-carriers, and only going in right over head and all twice. Other members of my band were less fortun ate. One finding himself getting out of his depth, got hold of it palm frond and pulled himself into deeper water sti ll, and had to roost among the palms until a special expedition of the tallest men went and gathered him like a Aower. Another got himself much mixed up and scratched because he thought to make a short cut through screw pines. He did not know the screw pine's little ways,' and he had to have a special relief expedition. One and all, we got horribly infested with leeches, having a frill of them round our necks like astrachan collars, and our hands covered with them, when we came out. The depth of the swamp is very uniform, at its ford we went in up to our necks, and climbed up on to the rocks on the hither side out of water equally deep. Knowing you do not like my going into details on such matters, I will confine my statement regarding our leeches, to the fact that it was for the best that we had some trade salt with us. It was most comic to see us salting each other; but in spite of the salt's efficacious action I was quite faint from loss of blood, and we all presented a ghastly sight as we made our way on into N'dorko. Of course the bleeding did not stop at once, and it attracted Aies and-but I am going into details, so I forbear. Vole had to pass across the first bit of open country I had seen for a long time-a real patch of grass on the top of a low ridge, which is fringed with swamp on all sides save the one we made our way to, the eastern. Shortly after passing through another plantation, we saw brown huts, and 1 Pandanus candelabrum-a marsh tree from 20 to 30 feet high gro·w- ing in dense thickets, the stout aerial roots coming down into the water and forming with the true stems a network even more dense than that of mangroves. Their leaves, which grow in clusters, are sword-shaped, and from 4 to 6 feet in length with sharp spiney margins, and the whole affair is ~xceedingly tough and scratchy. FROM ESOON TO AGON]O CHAP. in a few minutes were standing in the middle of a ramshackle village, at the en<;l of which, through a high stockade, with its gateway smeared \I·ith blood which hung in gouts, we saw our much longed for Rembwe Ri ver. I made for it, taking small notice of the hubbub our arrival occasioned, and passed through the gateway to its bank; then, setting its guarding bell ringing violently, I stood on the steep, black, mud slime bank, surrounded by a noisy crowd. It is a big ri ver, but nothing to the Ogow", either in breadth or beauty; what beauty it has is of the Niger delta ty pe- black mud-laden water, with a mangrove swamp fringe to it in all directions. I soon turned back into the vi llage and asked for Ugumu's factory. (e This is it," said an exceedingly dirty, good-looking, civil-spoken man in perfect English, though as pure blooded an African as ever walked. " This is it, sir," and h e pointed to one of the huts on the right-hand side, indis- ting uishable in squa lor from the rest. " \ ;Yhere's the Agent? " said I. " I 'm the Agent," he answered. You could have knocked me down with a feather. "\~rhere's John H olt's factory?" said 1. "You have passed it; it is up on the hill." This showed Messrs. Holt's local factory to be no bigger than Ugumu's. A t this point a big, scraggy, very black man with an irregularly formed face the size of a tea-tray and looking generally as if he had come out of a pantomime on the Arabian .Nights, dashed through the crowd, shouting, " I'm for Holty, I'm for Holty." (( This is my trade, you go \vay," says Agent number one. FeariNg my two Agen ts would fi ght and damage each other, so that neither would be any good for me, I firmly sa,id, If H ave you got any rum? 11 Agent number one looked crestfallen, Holty's triumphant. " Rum, fur su re," says he; so I gave him a fi ve- franc piece, which he regarded with g reat pleasure, and putti ng it in his mouth, he legged it like a lamplighter away to his store on the hill. "Have you any tobacco?" said I to Agent number one. He 1i>rightened, " Plenty tobacco, plenty d eth," said he; so I told him to g ive me out twenty heads. I gave my men t wo heads apiece. I told them rum was coming, and ordered them to take the loads on to H atton and Cookson's Agent's hut and then to go and buy chop and make themselves comfortable. They highly XII I PAY PALAVER 30 5 ----------------~------------- approved of this plan , and grunted assent ecstatically; and just as the loads were stowed Holty's anatomy hove in sight with a bottle of rum under each arm, and one in each hand; "'hile behind him came an acolyte, a fat, small boy, panting and puffing and doing his level best to keep up with his long- legged flying master. I gave my men some and put the rest in with my goods, and explained that I belonged to Hatton and Cookson's (it's the proper thing to belong to some- body), and that therefore I mNst take up my quarters at their Store; but Holty's energetic agent hung about me like a nilture in hopes of getting more fi\-e franc-pif!ce pickings_ I sent Ngouta off to get me some t<~a, and had the hut cleared of an excited audience, and shut myself in with Hatton and Cook- son's agent, and asked him seriously and anxiously if there was not a big factory of the firm' s on the river, because it was self-e\'ident he had not got anything like enough stuff to pay off my men with, and my agreement was to pay off on the R embwe, hence my horror at the small ness of the firm 's )I'dorko store, "B(lsides," I said, "M r. Glass (I knew the head Rembwe agent of Hatton and Cookson was a Mr. Glass), you have on ly got cloth and tobacco, and I ha\'e promised' the Fans to payoff in whatever they choose, and I know for sure they \\-ant po\\"deL /J 1' 1 am not NIr. Glass," sa id my friend; " he is up at Agonjo, I only do small trade for him here," Joy "! ! but where's Agonjo' To make a long story short I found Agonjo was an hour's paddle up the R emb\\'e and ti,e place we ought to have come out at. There was a botheration again about sending up a message, because of a \\-ar palaver; but [ got a pencil note, \\' ith my letter of introduction from iVl r. Cockshut to Sanga Glass, at last delivered to that gentle- man; and do\\-n he came, in a state of considerable astonish- ment, not unmixed with alarm, for no white man of any kind had been across from the Ogo we for years, and none had ever come out at X'dorko. Mr, Glass I found a n exceed ingly neat, well-educated M'pongwe gentleman in irreproachable English garments, and with irreproachable, but s lightly florea/e, English language, \\ 'e started talking trade, \\' ith my band in the middle of the st reet; making a patch of uproar in the moonlit surrounding silence. As soon as \\-e thought \ye had got one X FROM ESOO N T O AG ON] O CHAP. gentleman's mind settled as to what goods he would take his pay in , and were proceeding to investigate another gentleman's little fancies; gentleman nu mber one's mind came all to pieces again, and he wanted H to room his bundle," i.e. change articles in it for other articles of an equivalent value, if it must be, but of a higher, if possible. Oh ye shopkeepers in England who grumble at you r lady customers, just you come out here and try to serve, and satisfy a set of Fans! !VIr. Glass was evidently an expert at the affair, but it ,,·as past I I p.m. before we got the orders written out, and getting my baggage into some canoes, that Mr. G lass had brought down from Agonjo, for N'dorko only had a few very wretched ones, I started off up river with him and all the Ajumba, and Kiva, the F an, who had been promised a safe conduct. H e came to see the bundles for hi s fellow Fans were made up satisfactorily. The canoes being small there was quite a procession of them. Mr. Glass and [ shared one, wh ich ,,·as paddled by two smal l boys; how we ever got up the Rembwe that night I do not know, for although neither of us were fat, the canoe was a one man canoe, and the water lapped over- the edge in an alarming way. Had any of us sneezed, or had it been daylight when two or three mangro\-e flie s would ha\-e joined the party, we must have foundered; but all went ,,-ell; and on a rri ving at Agonjo !VI r. Glass most kindly opened his store, and by the ligh t of lamps and lanterns, we picked out the goods from hi s varied and ample supply, and handed them over to the Ajumba and K iva, and all, save three of the Ajumba, were satisfied. The three, Gray Shirt, Silence, and Pagan quietly explained to me that they found the Remb,,-e price so little better than the Lembarene price that they would rather get their pay off !VIr. Cockshut, than risk taking it back through the Fan country, so [ gave them books on him. I gave all my remaining trade goods, and the rest of the rum to the Fans as a dash, and t hey were more than sati sfied. I must say they never clamoured for dash for top. The Passenger we had brought through with us, who had really made himsel f very helpful , was qu ite surpri sed at getting a bundle of goods from me_ !VIy only anxiety was as to whether Fika would get his share all right; but I expect he XIII FAREWELL TO THE FANS 30 7 did, for the Ajumbas are very honest men: and they ,,'ere going back with my Fan friends, I found out, by the by, the reason of Fika's shyness in coming through to the Rembwe ; it was a big wife pala\'er. I had a touching farewell with the Fans: and so in peace, good feeling, and prosperity T parted company for the second time with H the terrible M'pongwe," whom I hope to meet with again, for "'ith all their many faults and failings, they are real men, I am faint-hearted enough to hope, that om next journey together, may not be over a country that seems to me to have been laid down as an obstacle race track for Mr. G, F, Vvatts's Titans, and to have fallen into shocking bad repair. X 2 CHAPTER XlV BUSH TRADE AND FAN CUSTO~[S ''''herein the Voyager, having fallen among the black traders, disc:ourses on these men and their manner of life; and the difficulties and dangers ·attending the barter they carryon with the bush sa\"agcs ; and on some of the reasons that makes this barter so belo,"ed and followed by both the blacR:: trader and the savage. To which is added an account of the l'(lanner of life of the Fan tribe; the strange form of coinage used by these people; their manner of hunting the elephant, working in iron; and s1.10h like things. SPENT a few, lazy, pleasant days at Agonjo, Mr. Glass doing all he could to make me comfortable, though he had a nasty touch of fever on him just then. His efforts were ably seconded by his good lady, an exceedingly comely Gaboon womCl!Il, with pretty manners, and an excellent gift in cookery. The third member of the staff was the store-keeper, a clever fellow: I fancy a Loango from his clean-cut features and spare make, but his tribe I know not for a surety. \~rhat I clo know is that he can sing ., Partant pour la Syrie" with intense power and a penetrating pathos in the depths of the night. But I clo not chronicle this as a discovery of my own; it was common knowledge to every sentient being within a radius of half a mile of the factory. l\1osquitoes here we met again: some one ought to go into the local distribution of mo-squitoes in Congo Fran~ais instead of just saying hard things about them. I leave the work for a nobler sou l than mine, and to assist him, note the fact that they are simply awful throughout all Kama country and Ouroungou. Up at L embarene, which is above Kama country, they are worse, and remain so until you get to Osamokita ; there they cease CH. XI\- FLAPPISTS AND CRUSHERS 30 9 from troubling-although there is still a stretch of flat country and a supply of stagnant 'mer in the shape of small lai,es; I say this regretfully, but sc ience is t ruth. I once had a nice little theory, that worked well in the Niger Delta, that you never had mosquitoes if you had a 4-knot current water supply; unless you bred the said mosquitoes for yourself, in tanks or barrels; because, said the theory, the larva got lI"ashed away down. But although the Ogowe has a 4-knot current twice over a t Osamokita, and there are no mosqu itoes; still there are those lakes in the forest at the back of it; so anyone who can patch that theory up, and make it go again , is ,,-eicome to it. Again re- garding mosquito distribution, there's a pretty so lid fog of them fro m Kang,,·e to Are,·ooma, from Arevooma on to Lake Ncovi, and at Lake Ncovi they-but it's no use my writing down my opinion about mosquitoes in Lake Ncovi because no one will print it. \ ,Vhen we left Ncov i, and got well into the forest, we missed them, and were no more troubled lI"ith them, until we got here to Agonjo, where there is not a 4-knot current; but I ,,·ill not revert to that, and merely remark a peculiarity I have obsen·ed in mosquitoes s ince I have been so much in touch with them in Congo Fran~ais, and that is tbat they evidently feed on oil; several-many hundreds that I have crushed have left quite a pool of oil-I presume palm oil, but it may be an imal fat. I should remark before leav in g this subject that there are two schools in this district which quarrel much o,-er the merits of thei r separate methods of destroying mosquitoes-the Flappists and the Crushers. I am a Crusher, holding it better to allow the vermin to get a hold, and his entire mind set on blood, and then to descend on him quietly, but firmly, with a finger; as for those heretics the Flappists they alll"ays hurt themselves, and frequently fail to bag their game, by their more showy methods. I really thought that I was again getting a chance to secure a valuable specimen of spectra d01llestica-or the common domestic gbost-the first night in Agonjo_ I held it to be the ghost of a carpenter, for it made a continuous sawing noise in the bamboo wall by the side of my bed, but again I was disap- pointed : it ,,·as only the usual rat. This enterprising rodent indeed ,,·as a fellow collector, and had stolen the bladder off 310 BUSH TRADE AND FAN CUSTOMS CHAP. one of my bottles, and was determined to get it up into the roof whether the wall bamboos would let him or no. I helped him up with it, he holding on to his end while I poked the other up with a stick, and we got the thing done between us, and I hope he is happy. One of these black trader factories is an exceedingly inter- esting place to stay at, for in these factories you are right down on the bed rock of the trade. On the Coast, for the greater part, the white traders are dealing with black traders, middle- men, who have procured their trade stuff from the bush natives, who collect and prepare it. Here, in the black trader factory, you see the first stage of the export part of the trade: namely the barter of the collected trade stuff between the collector and the middleman. I will not go into details regarding it. 'What I saw merely confirmed my opinion from my other ex- perience, and this opinion had been further strengthened by what I had been seeing, during the previous months, while living among bush men collecting trade stuff; and that is that the native is not cheated; no, not even by a fellow African trader; and I will merely here pause to sing a p--iound ou t, and I hope the next \'orager among the Fans \\"ill keep h is eye on it. You do not find bikei close down to Libre\·ille, among the Fans \\'ho are there in a semi-civi lised state, or more properly speaking in a state of disintegrating culture. You must go for bush. I thought I saw in bikei a certain resemblance in underlying idea with the early Greek coins I have seen at Cambridge, made like the fore -parts of cattle; and I have li tt le doubt that the articles of barter among the Fans before the introduction of the rubber, ebony, and ivory trades, which in their districts are comparatively recent, were iron implements. For the Fans are good workers in iron ; and it would be in consonance with well -known instances among other savage races in th~ matter of stone implements, that these things, important of old, should su ryi"e, and be employed in the matte r of such an old and important affair as marriage. They thus become .ju-ju; and indeed all West Afri can legitimate marriage, although appearing to the casual observer a mere matter of barter, is never soleiy such, but always has ju-ju in it. \~'-e may as well here follow out the whole of the domestic life of the Fan, now we ha"e got him married. His difficult)· does not only consist in getting enough bikei together but in getting a lady he can many. No amount of bikei can justify a man in marrying his first cousin, or his aunt; and as relation- sh ip among the Fans is recognised with both his father and his mother, not as among the Igal \\'a with the latter's blood relations onl)", there are an awful quantity of aunts and cousins about from whom he is debarred. But when he has surmounted his many difficulties, and dodged his relations, and married, he is seemingly a better husband than the man of a more cultured tribe. He will turn a hand to anything, that does not necess itate hi s putting down his gun outside his village gateway. He will help chop fire\\'ood, or goat's chop, or he will carr)' the baby with pleasure, while his good lady does these things; and in bush "illages, he always escorts her so as to be on hand in case of leopards, or othe r local unpleasant- nesses. \~lhen inside the village he \\"ill lay down his gun, _ \\"ithin hand)" reach, and build the house, tease out fibre to y BUSH TR,-\l)E A:\,D FA:\, CUSTO:lIS CHAP. make game nets with, and plait baskets, or make pottery \\,ith the ladies, cheerily chatting the while, Fan pottery, although rough and sunbaked, is artistic in form and ornamented, for the Fan ornaments all his work; the articles made in it consist of cooking pots, palm-wine bottles, water bottles and p ipes, but not all water bottles, nor all pipes are made of pottery, I wish they were, particularly the former, for they are occasionally made of beautifully plaited fibre coated with a layer of a certain gum with a vile taste, which it imparts to the water in the vessel. They say it does not do this if the vessel is soaked for two days in water, but it does, and I should think contaminates the stream it was soaked in into the bargain, The pipes are sometimes made of iron very neatly, I should imagine they smoked hot, but of this I ha,'e no knowledge, One of my Ajumba friends got himself one of these pipes when we were in Efoua, and that pipe was, on a"d ofr, a curse to the party, Its owner soon learnt not to hold it by the bowl, but by the wooden stem, when smoking it; the other lessons it had to teach he learnt more slowly, He tucked it, when he had done smok- ing, into the fold in hi s cloth, until he had had three serious con fl agrations raging round his middle, And to the end of the chapter, after having hi s last pipe at night with it, he would lay it on the ground, before it was cool. He learnt to lay it out of reach of hi s own cloth, but hi s fellow Ajumbas and he himself persisted in always throwing a leg on to it shortly after, and there was another row. The Fan basket-work is strong ly made, but ,'ery inferior to the Fjort basket-work, Their nets are, ho\\'ever, the finest I have ever seen. These are made mainly for catching small game, such as the beautiful littl e gazel les (iVcluri) with dark gray sk ins on the upper part of the body, white underneath, and satin-like in sleekness allover. Their form is very dainty, the little legs being no thicker than a man's finger, the neck long and the head ornamented with little pointed horns and broad round ears. The nets are tied on to trees in two long lines, which converge to an acute angle, the bottom part of the net lying on the ground. Then a party of men and women ac-. compan ied by their trained dogs, which have bell s hung round XIV A FAN FORGE 32 3 their necks, beat the surrounding bushes, and the frightened small game rush into the nets, and become entangled. The fibre from which these nets are made has a long staple, and is exceedingly strong. I once saw a small bush cow caught in a set of them and unable to break through, and once a leopard; he, however, took his section of the net away with him, and a good deal of vegetation and sticks to boot. In addition to nets, this fibre is made into bags, for carrying things in while in the bush, and into the water bottles already men- tioned. The iron -work of the Fans deserves especial notice for its excellence. The anvil is a big piece of iron which is embedded firmly in the ground. Its upper surface is flat, and pointed at both ends. The hammers are solid cones of iron·, the upper part of the cones prolonged so as to give a good grip, and the blows are given directly downwards, like the blo\\'s of a pestle. The bellows are of the usual African type, cut out of one piece of solid but soft wood; at the upper end of these bellows there are two chambers hollowed out in the wood and then covered with the skin of some an imal, from which the hair has been removed. This is bound firmly round the rim of each chamber with tie-tie, and the bag of it at the top is gathered up, and bound to a small piece of stick, to g ive a convenient hand hold. The straight cylinder, te rm inating in the nozzle, has two channels burnt in it which communi- cate with each of the chambers respectively, and half-way up the cylinder, there are burnt from the outside into the air passages, three series of holes, one series on the upper su rface, and a series at each side. This ingenious arrangement gives a constant current of air up from the nozzle when the bellows are worked by a man sitting behind them, and rapidly and alternately pulling up the skin cover over one chamber, while depressing the other. In order to make the affair firm it is lashed to pieces of stick stuck in the g round in a suitable way so as to keep the bellows at an angle with the nozzle directed towards the fire. As wooden bellows like this if stuck into the fire would soon be aflame, the nozzle is put into a cylinder made of clay. This cylinder is made sufficiently large at the .end, into ,,·hich the nozzle of the bellows goes, for the air to Y :2 BU S H TRADE AND F AN CUSTOMS CHAP. ha\'e fuJI play round the latter. On my first meeting with this performance, I must needs think that the clay affair did not fit the bellows, and asked if they had no bigger bello\\'s, \;Vhen finally the Fan blacksmith found out what error I \\as sufferin g from, he jammed his bellows into the clay cylinder and there was no end of a smother; for of cou rse when fixed tight, instead of getting the perpetual current of fresh air, it altern Mely sucked up and blew out the smoke and hot air from the fire itself. I apologised, AXGOLA Bl.ACKS:\lITHS. The Fan bellows only differ from those of the other iron- working \;Vest Coast tribes in havi ng the channels from the 1\\"0 chambers in one piece of wo~d all the ,,'ay; in the other bellows [ have seen the two channels unite just above the nozzle, And also the Fan decorates the bello\\'s with spearhead forms, the points whereof are directed towards the fire; he seems to think this hel ps, His forge is the same as the other forges, a round cavity scooped in the g round ; his fuel also is charcoal. His other smith's tool consis ts of a pointed piece of iron, \\'ith ,,'hich XIV IVORY EATERS he works out the patterns he puts at the handle-end of his swords, &c. I must now speak briefly ~ the most important article with which the Fan deals, namely ivory_ His methods of collecting this are several, and many a wild story the handles of you r table kni,-es could tell you, if their i,-m-y has passed through Fan hands_ For ivory is e,-erywhere an evil thing before \\-hich the quest for gold sinks into a parlour game; and when its charms seize such a tribe as the Fans, "conclusions pass their careers.)) _-\ very common way of collecting a tooth is to kill the person who owns one_ Therefore in order to prevent this catastrophe happening to you yoursel f, when you have one, it is held advisable, unless you are a po\\-erful person in your own village, to bury or sinh: the said tooth and say nothing about it until the trader comes into your district or you get a chance of smuggling: it quietly down to him_ Some of these pri,-ate ivories are kept for years and years before they reach the trader's hands_ _-\nd quite a third of the ivory you see coming on board a vessel to go to Europe is dark from this keeping: some teeth a 1m-ely brown like a well -coloured meerschaum, others quite black, and gnawed by that strange little creature- much heard of, and abused, yet little known in ivory ports-the ivory rat. This squirrel-like creature was first brought to Europe by Paul du Chaillu, and as far as I know no further specimen has been secured_ I got two, but I am ashamed to say I lo~t them_ Du Chaillu called it Sciumseboriwl'llS_ Its main point, as may be imagined, is its teeth_ The incisors in the upper jaw are long, and closely set together; those in the lower are still longer, and as they seem always to go in under the upper teeth, [ wonder how the creature gets its mouth shut. The feet are hairless, and some\\-hat like those of a squirrel. The tail is long, and marked with transverse bars, and it is not carried over the back. Over the eyes, and on either side of the mouth, are ,-ery long stiff bristles_ The mischief these little creatures play with buried ivory is immense, because, for some inscrutable reason, they seem to prefer the flavour of the points of the teeth, the most valuable part. hory, however, that is obtained by murder is private ivory_ The public ivory trade among the Fans is carried on in a way BUSH TR ADE Ai'W FAN CUSTO~[S CHAP. more in accord ance \\-ith European ideas of a legitimate trade. The greater part of thi s i,'ory is obta ined from dead elephants, There arc in th is region certain places where the elephants are said to go to die, A locality in one district pointed out to me as such a place, was a g reat swamp in the fores t. A swamp that e"idently was deep in the middle, for from ou t its dark waters no s,,-a mp plant, or tree grew, and eyidently its shores s loped suddenly, for the band of swamp plants round its edge was narrow, It is just possible that during the rai ny season when most of the surrounding country would be under water, e lephants might stray into this natural trap and get drowned, and on the d ry ing up of the ,,'aters be di scoyered, and the fact being kno,,'n, be regul arly sought for by the nat i,'es cognisant of this. I inquired ca refully whether these places where the elephants came to die a lways had water in them, but they sa id no, and in one district spoke of a yalley or round- shaped depression in among the mountains, But nati,'es ,,'ere na turall)" dis inclined to take a stranger to these ivory mines, and a \,-hite person who has caught-as any one who has been in touch must catch- iyory fe,'er, is natural ly equally disin- clined to g i,'e localit ies. f\ certa in percentage of i,'or), coll ected by the Fans is from li,'e elephants, but I am bound to admit that their method of bunting elephants is disgracefu lly uns portsmanlike, A herd of elephants is disco,'ered by rubber hunters or by depredations on plantations, and the "'hole "illage, men, ,,'omen. children, babies and dogs turn out into the forest and stalk the monsters into a suitable ra\'ine, taking care not to scare them. " 'hen they hm'e gradua ll y edged the elephants on into a suitable place, the)' fell trees and wreathe them ,'err roughly to- crether with bush rope. all round an immense enclosure. still ~aking care not to scare the elephants into a rush. This fence is quite inadequate to stop any elephant in itself, but it is made effective b)" being smeared with certain things. the smell "'hereof the elephants de-test so much that "'hen the)' ,,'ander up to it. the)' turn back d is,,;ustcd. I need hardl), remark that this preparation is made b)' the witch doctors and its con- stituents a secret of theirs. and I ",as on I)' able to find out some of them. Then poisoned plantains a re placed "'ithin XIV Al\ ELEPHA:\T HUNT the enclosure, and the elephants eat these and grow dro\Ysier and drowsier; if the ,,'ater...J;upply within the enclosure is a pool it is poisoned, but if it is a running stream this cannot be done, During this time the crowd of men and \Yomen spend their days round the enclosure, ready to turn back any elephant who may attempt to break out, going to and fro to the village for their food, Their nights they spend in little bough shelters by the enclosure, watching more vig il- antly than by day, as the elephants are more active at night, it being their usual feeding time, During the whole time the witch doctor is hard at work making incantations and charms, with a vie,,' to finding out the proper time to attack the elephants. In my opinion, hi s decision fundamenta lly d'epends on his knowledge of the state of poisoning the animals are in, but his version is that he gets hi s information from the forest spirits. \Vhen, ho,,'ever, he has settled the day, the best hunters steal into the enclosure and take up safe positions in trees, and the outer crowd set light to the ready-built fires, and make the greatest uproar possible, and fire upon the staggering, terrified elephants as they attempt to break out. The hunters in the trees fire down on them as they rush past, the fatal point at the back of the skull being well exposed to them. \~Ihen the animals are nearly exhausted, those men who <;10 not possess guns dash into the enclosure, and the men who do, reload and join them, and the work is then completed . One elephant hunt I chanced upon at the final stage h ad ta ken t,,'o months' preparation, and althou gh the plan sounds safe enough, there is really a good deal of danger left in it with all the drugging and ju-ju. There were eight elephants kill ed that day, but three burst through everything, sending energetic spectators flying, and squashing t",o men and a baby as flat as botanical specimens. . The subsequent proceedings ,,'ere impn!ssi,'e. The whole of the people gorged themseh'es on the meat for days, and great chunks of it were smoked over the fires in all directions. A certain portion of the flesh of the hind leg was taken b)· the "'itch doctor for ju-ju, and ,,'as supposed to be put a,,'a)' b)' him, with certain suitable incantations in the recesses of BUSH TEADE AND FAN CUSTOMS CHAP. the forest; his idea being apparently either to give ri se to more elephants, or to induce the forest spirits to bring more elephamts into the di strict. Meanwhile the carcases were going bad, rapidly bad, and the smell for a mile round was strong enough to have taken the paint off- a door. Moreover there were flies, most of the flies in \Vest Africa, I imagine, and- but I will say no more. I thought before this experience that I had touched bottom in smells when once I spent the outside of a week in a village, on the sand bank in front of which a portly hippopotamus, who had been shot up river, got stranded, and proceeded energetically to melt into its ele- mental gases; but that was a passing whiff to this. Dr. Nassau tell s me that the manner in which the i,·ory gained by one of these hunts is divided is as follows :-" The witch doctor, the ch iefs, and the family on whose ground the enclosu re is built, and especially the household whose women first discovered the animals, decide in council as to the divi- sion of the tu sks and the share of the flesh to be given to the crowd of outsiders. The next day the tusks are remO\·ed and each famil y represented in the assemblage cuts up and distri- butes the fl esh." In the hunt I saw fini shed, the e lephants had not been discovered, as in the case Dr. Nassau above speaks of, in a plantation by women, but by a party of rubber hunters in the forest some four or fi ve miles from any village, and the ivory that would have been a llotted to the plantation holder in the former case, went in this case to the young rubber hunters. Of the method of catching game in traps I have already spoken. Such are the pursuits, sports and pastimes of my friends the F ans. I have been considerably chaffed both by whites and blacks about my partiality for this tribe, but as I li ke A fricans in my way-not a fa Sierra Leone-and these A fri cans have more of the qualit ies I like than any other tribe I have met, it is but natural that I should prefer them. They are brave and so you can respect them, which is an essenti al element in a friendly feel ing. They are on the whole a fine race, particularly those in the mountain dis- tri cts of the Sierra del Cristal, ,,·here one continually sees magnificent specimens of human beings) both male and XIV KEVER LOSE YOUR HEAD 32 9 female. Their colour is light bronze, many of the men have beards, and albi noes a.re rare among them. The aver- age height in the mountain districts is five feet six to five feet eight, the difference in stature between men and women not being great. Their countenances are very bright and expressive, and if once you ha\'e been among them) you can never mistake a Fan. But it is in their mental charac- teristics that their difference from the lethargic, dying-out coast tribes is most marked. The Fan is full of fire, temper, intelligence and go; very teachable, rather difficult to manage, quick to take offence, and utterly indifferent to human life. I ought to say that other people, who should know him better than I, say he is a treacherous) thievish) murderous canni- bal. I ne,"er found him treacherous; but then I never trusted him) remembering one of the aphori sms of my great teacher Captain Boler of Bonny, "It's not safe to go among bush tribes, but if you are such a fool as to go, you needn't go and be a bigger fool stil l, you've done enough." And Captain Boler's other great aphorism was: " :l\ ever be afraid of a black man." « \ ,Vhat if I can)t help it?)) said I. ,( Don)t show it/' said he. To these precepts I humbly add another : "Never lose your head." My most favourite form of literature, I may remark) is accounts of mountaineering exploits) though I have never seen a glacier or a pennanent snow llilountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be IITitten, and lI"hat form of bumble-puppy grammar and com- position is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet OJ, one side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an ar8e with a precipice on either. i'Jothing on earth wou ld persuade me to do either of these things myself, but they re- mind me of bits of country I ha,'e been through where you walk along a narrow line of security with gulfs of murder looming on each side, and where in exactly the same way you are as safe as if you were in your easy chair at home, as long as you get sufficient holding ground: not on rock in the bush village inhabited by murderous cannibals, but on ideas ir those men's and women's minds; and these ideas, which I think I may say you will always find, give you safety. 330 BUSH TRADE AND FAK CUSTON!S CHAP. It is not ad\'isable to play \I'ith them, or to attempt to erad i- cate them, because you regard them as superstitious; and. ne\'er, n"ver shoot too soon. I have never had to shoot, and hope never to ha\'e to; because in such a situation, one \"hite alone with no troops to back him means a clean finish, But this would not discourage me if I had to start, only it makes me more inclined to walk round the obstacle, than to become a mere blood splotch against it, if this can be done without losing your self-respect, which is the mainspring of your po,,'er in 'Nest A frica. As for flourishing about a revolver and threatening to fire, I hold it utter idiocy, I have pe\'er tried it, howe\'er, so I speak from prejudice which arises from the feeling that there is something cowardly in it. Always ha\'e your revoh-el- ready loaded in good order, and have your hand on it when things are getting warm, and in addition have an exceedingly good bowie knife, not a hinge knife, because with a hinge knife you have got to get it open-hard work in a country where all things go rusty in the joints-and hinge kni\'es are liable to close on you r own fingers, The best form of knife ·is the bowie, " 'ith a shallow half moon cut out of the back at the point end, and this depression sharpened to a cutting edge. A knife is essential, because after wading neck deep in a swamp your revo lver is neither use nor ornament until you have had time to clean it. But the chances are you rna)' go across A frica, or liYe years in it, and require neither. It is just the case of the gentleman who asked if one required a revolver in Carolina? and \I'as answered, " \liou may be here one year, and you may be here two and never want it ; but when you do want it you'll want it very bad," The cannibalism of the Fans, although a pre\'alent habit, is no danger, I think, to white people, except as regards the bother it gives one in preyenting one's black companions from getting eaten, The Fan is not a cannibal from sacri ficial motives like the negro. H e does it in his common sense way, l\1an's flesh) he says, is good to,eat, very good, and he wishes you would try it. Oh dear no, he ne\'er eats it himself, but the next door to\\'n does, He is alwa)'s \'ery much abused for CANNIBALISM 33 1 eating his relations, but he really d0es not do this_ H e ,,-ill eat his next door neighbouis relations and sell hi s OIm IX A FAX \-lLLAGE. deceased to his next door neighbour in return; but he does not buy slaves and fatten them LIp for his table as some of 332 BUSH TRADE AND FAN CUSTOilIS CH. XIV the Middle Congo tribes I know of do. He has no sla\'es, no prisoners of war, no cemeteries, so you must dra\\· your o\\'n conclusions. ;-./0, my friend , I will not tell you any cannibal stori es. I ha\"e heard how good M. du Chaill u fared a fter telling you some beauties, and now you come away from the Fan vill age and down the Rembwe river. CHAPTER XV DOIYN THE REMBIYE Setting forth ho\\' the Voyager descends the Rembwe Ri\"er, with di\'ers excursions and alarms, in the compan y of a black trader, and returns safel y to the Coast. To which is added some account of the geog raphy of this reg ion, the Gaboon and its chief affillents. GETTING away from Agonjo seemed as if it would be nearly as difficult as getting to it, but as the qual ters were comfortable and the society fairly good, I was not anxious. I own the local scenery was a little too much of the N iger Delta type for perfect beallty, just the long lines of mangrove, and the muddy river lounging almost imperceptibly to sea, and nothing else in sight. Mr. Glass, however, did not t ake things so philosophically. I was on his commercial conscience, for I had come in from the bush and there was money in me. Therefore I " 'as a trade product~a new trade stuff that ought to be worked up and developed ; and he found himself unable to do this, for although he had secured the first parcel, as it were, and got it successfully stored, yet he could not ship it, and he felt this was a reproach to him. Many were his lamentations that the firm had not prm'ided him with a large sailing canoe and a suitable crew to dea l with this new line of trade. I did my best to comfort him , pointing out that the most enterprising fir m could not be expected to prm-ide expensive things like these, on the ex- tremely remote chance of ladies arri ving per 'bush at Agonjo~ in fact not until the trade in them was ,,-e ll de\-eloped. But he refused to see it in this light and harped upon the s ubject, wrapped up, poor man, in' a great coat and a muffler, because 33+ DOWN THE REilIBW£ CHAP. his ague was on him. In not accepting my view I think he was in error, undoubted authority on bush trade though he is; for I feel fa irly certain that even if Messrs. Hatton and Cookson, or any other firm, were to run a weekly line of Palace steamboats with brass bands, and red-velvet saloons up and down the Rembwe river, there would not be sufficient white passenger traffic to pay for coal. Certainly not by my route, one that had never been taken even by a black trader before. But I am not thinking of taking out a patent for it; for one thing, I am sure it would never. become sufficiently popular to pay the patentee's preliminary expenses, and for another, the relatives of people who might attempt to use it at any but the short time in the year it is usable, would come down on me for damages. I next tried to convince Mr. Glass that any canoe would do for me to go down in. "No," he said) (( any canoe will not do:" and he explained that when you got down the Rembwe to 'Como Point you were in a rough, nasty bit of water, the Gaboon, which has a fine confused set of currents from the tidal wash and the streams of the R embwe and 'Como ri,·ers, in which it would be improbable tbat a ri ver canoe could live any time worth mentioning. Progress below 'Como Point by means of mere paddling he considered imposs ible. There was nothing for it but a big sai ling canoe, and there was no big sailing can·oe to be had. I think Mr. Glass got a ray of comfort out of the fact that Messrs. John Holt's sub-agent was, equally with himself, unable to ship me. At this point in the affair there en tered a highly dramatic figure. H e came on to the scene suddenly and with much uproar, in a way that would have made his fortune in a trans- pontine drama. I shall always regret I have not got that man's portrait, for I cannot do him justice with ink. He dashed up on to the verandah, smote the frail form of Mr. Glass between the shoulders, and flung his own massive one into a chair. His name was Obanjo, but he liked it pronounced Capta in Johnson, and his profession was a bush and river trader on his own account. Every movement of the man was theatrical, and he used to look covertly at you every now and then to see if he had produced his impression, which was xv C.WTAI:\ JOH;:-- me. One little expects in such a remote region to require one; my name is Prince lVlakaga," 1 I said I was similal'ly card-caseless for reasons identical with hi s own, but gave him my name and address, and Obanjo, hal-ing got all aboard, including a member of the crew, fetched by the leg, shoved off, and with many bows we and the black gentleman parted. As soon as we were ' out of earshot from shore " \ ;Vho is he, Obanjo?" said 1. Obanjo laughed , and said he was a M'pongwe gentleman who had at one time been ag,wt for one of the big European firms at Gaboon, and had been sel-eral times to Europe. Thinking that he could make more money on his own account, he had left the finn and started trading all round this district. A t first he made a g reat deal of money, but a lot of his trust had recently gone bad, and he was doubtless up here now looking after some such matter. Obanjo ev idently thought him too much of a lavender-kid-glove gentleman to deal with bush trade, and held it was the usual way; a man got spoilt by going to Europe. I quite agree with him on general lines, but Prince :Vl akaga had a fine pol ish on him without the obvious conceit usually found in men who have been home. We had another cheerful littl e incident that afternOON \ :V hil e we ,,'ere going along softl y, so ftly as was our wont, in the broiling heat, I wishi ng I had an umbrella-for si tting on that bamboo stage with no sort of protection from the sun was hot work after the forest shade I had had previously- tll'O small boys in two small canoes shot out from the bank and paddled hard to us and jumped on board. After a few 1 "::\[akaga, an honourable name, which only one man, and he the bravest and best hunter in the tribe, may bear. The office of the l',,[akaga is to lead all desperate affairs-for instance, if anyone has murdered one of his fellow-,-illagers, and the n1urdere~s town refuses to gi\'e him lip (which is almost always the case, they thinking it is a shame to surrender anyone who has taken refuge with them), then it is the business of the }Iakaga to take the best men of his village, and lead them to the assault of that wh ich protects the murderer, and destroy it with its nhabitants_"-Du Clmilltls E.'"rjJloratioJ1s and AdveJlturcs ilt Equatorial A/n','a, 1861, p, 393. DOWN THE REMB\\'E CHAP. --- -- - - -- minutes' cOI1\'ersation with Obanjo one of them carefully sank his canoe; the other just turned his adrift and they joined our crel\'. I saw they were Fans, as indeed nearl)' all the crew were, but I did not think much of the affair. Our tender, the small canoe, had been sent out as usual with the big black man and another A. B. to fi sh; it being one of our industries to fi sh hard all the time with that big net. The fish caught, sometimes a bushel or two at a time, almost all grey mullet, were then brought alongside, split open, and cleaned. \ l.Je thel' l1ad all round as many of them for supper as we wanted, the rest we hung on strings o\"er our fire, more or less insufficiently smoking them to prevent decomposition, it being Obanjo's intention to sell them when he made his next trip up the 'Como; for the latter being less rich in fi sh than the Rembwe they would command a good price there. \Ve always had ou r eye on things like this, being, I proudl), remark, none of your g ilded floatin g hotel of a ferry-boat like those Cunard or \l.Jhite Star liners are, but just a good trader that was not ashamed to pay, and not afraid of ,,'ork. \~T ell, jus t after we had leisurely entered a new reach of the ri ver, round the corner after us, propelled at a phe- nomena l pace, came OUf fi shing canoe, which we had left behind to ha ul in the net and then rejoin us. The occu- pants, particularly the big black A. B., were shouting something in terror stricken accen ts. tf \;Vhat?)} says Obanjo spring ing to his feet. "The F an! the Fan! " shouted the canoe men as they shot towards us like agitated chickens making for their hen. In another moment they ",ere alongside and tumbling over our g unwale into the bottom of the vessel s till crying" The Fan! The Fan! The Fan! " Obanjo then b)' means of energetic questioning externally applied, and accom- panied by fl orid language that cast a rose pink g low, smelling of sulphur, round us, elicited the information that about 40,000 Fans, armed with knives and guns, were coming down the R embwe with intent to kill and slay us, and might be expected to arrive within the next half wink. On hearing this, the whole of ou r gall ant crew took up masterly recumbent positions in the bottom of our vessel and turned gray round the lips, But Obanjo rose to the situation like ten lions. "Take the xv A RACE FOR LIFE 343 rudder," he shouted to me, " take her into the middle of the stream and keep the sail fu.I.L It occurred to me that per- haps a position underneath the bamboo staging might be more healthy than one on the top of it, exposed to el'ery microbe of a bit of old iron and what not and a half that according to native testimony would shortly be frisking through the atmosphere from those Fan guns; and moreol'er I had not forgotten having been previously shot in a somewhat similar situation, though in better company, However I did not say anything; neither, between ourselves, did I somehow beli eve in those Fans, So regardless of danger, I grasped the helm, and sent our gallant craft flying before the breeze down the bosom of the great wild ri ver ( that's the proper way to put it, but in the interests of science it may be translated into crawling towards the middle). Meanwhile Obanjo performed prodigies of yalour all over the place, He triced up the mainsail, stirred up his faint-hearted crew, and got out the sweeps, i.e. one old oar and four paddles, and with this assistance we solemnly trudged away from danger at a pace that nothing slOll'er than a Thames dumb barge, going against stream, could possibly overhaul. Still we did not feel safe, and I suggested to Ngouta he should rise up and help; but he declined, stating he was a married man. Obanjo cheering the paddlers with insp iriting words sprang with the agility of a leopard on to the bamboo staging aft, standing there with his gu n ready loaded and cocked to face the coming foe, look- ing like a statue put up to himsdf at the public expense. The worst of this was, however, that while Obanjo's face was to the coming foe, his back was to the crew, and they forthwith commenced to re-subside into the bottom of the boat, paddles and all. I , as second in command, on seeing this, said a few blood-stirring words to them, and Obanjo sent a few more of great power at them over his shoulder, and so we kept the paddles going. Presently from round the corner shot a Fan canoe, It con- tained a lady in the bows, weeping and wringing her hands, while another lady sympathetically howling, paddled it. Obanjo in lurid language requested to be informed why they were following us. The lady in the bows said , "My son! my 344 DOWN THE RE~mwt CtL\P. son!" and in a second more three other canoes shot round the corner full of men with guns. Now this looked like business, so Obanjo and I looked round to urge ou r crew to greater exer- tions and saw, to our disgust, that the gallant band had suc- cessfully subsided into the bottom of the boat while we had been eying the foe. Obanjo gave me a recipe for getting the sweeps out again. I did not follow it, but got the job done, for Obanjo could not take his eye and gun off the leading canoe and the canoes having crept up to within some twenty yards of us, poured out their simple tale of woe. It seemed that one of those miscreant boys was a runaway from a Fan village. He had been desirous, with the usual enterprise of young Fans, of seeing the great world that he knew lay down at the mouth of the river, i.e. Libreville Gaboon. He had pleaded with his parents for leave to go down and engage in work there, but the said parents holding the tender- ness of his youth unfitted to combat with Coast Town life and temptation, refused this request, and so the young rascal had run away \.vithout leave and with a canoe, and was sur- mised to have joined the well-known Obanjo. Obanjo owned he had (more armed canoes were coming round the corner), and said if the mother would come and fetch her boy she could have him. He for hi s part would not have dreamed of taking him if he had known hi s relations disapproved. Everyone seemed much rel ieved, except the causa belli. The Fans did not ask about two boys and providentially we gave the lady the right one. He went reluctantly. I feel pretty nearly sure he foresaw more kassengo than fatted ca lf for him on his return home. \~lhen the Fan canoes \I'ere well back round the corner again, we had a fine hunt for the other boy, and finally unearthed him from under the bamboo staging. \~lhen' we got him out he told the same tale. He also was a runaway who wanted to see the world, and taking the opportunity of the majority of the people of his village being away hunting, he had slipped off one night in a canoe, and dropped down river to the village of the boy who had just been recl ai med. The two boys had fraternised , and come on the rest of their way together, lying waiting, hidden up a creek, for Obanjo, who they knew was coming down river; and xv :-IAUTICAL PROBLElIIS 345 having successfully got picked up by him, they thought they were safe. But after this afi:air boy number two judged there was no more safety yet, and that his family would be down after him very shortly; for he said he was a more valuable and important boy than his late companion, but his family were an uncommon savage set. vVe felt not the least anxiety to make their acquaintance, so clapped heels on our gallant craft and kept the paddles going, and as no more Fans were in sight our crew kept at work bravely. \ ;Vhile Obanjo, now in a boisterous state of mind, and flushed with victory, said things to them about the way they had collapsed when those two women in a canoe came round that corner, that must have blistered their feelings, but they never winced. They laughed at the joke against themselves merrily. The othe;- boy's famil y we never saw and so took him safely to Gaboon, where Obanjo got him a good place. Really .how much danger there was proportionate to the large amount of fear on our boat I cannot tell you. It never struck me there was any, but on the other hand ·the crew and Obanjo e\-idently thought it was a bad place; and my wh ite face would have been no protection, for the Fans would not h ave suspected a white of being on such a canoe and might have fired on us if they had been unduly irritated and not treated by Obanjo with that fine compound of bully and blarney that he is such a master of \Vhatever may have been the true nature of the affair, how- ever, it had one good effect, it got us out of the Rembwe into the Gaboon, and although at the time th is seemed a doubtful blessing, it made for progress. I had by this time mastered the main points of incapability in our craft. A . we could not go against the wind. B. we could not go against the tide. vVhile we were in the R embwe there was a state we wilf designate as C-the tide coming one way, the wind another. \ Vith this state we could p rogress, backwards if the wind came up against us too strong, but seawards if it did not, and the tide was running down. If the t ide was running up, and the wind was coming down, then we went seaward, softly, softly alongside the mangrove bank, where the rip of the tide stream is least. \Vhen, howe\·er, we got down off 'Como Point, DOWN THE REMBWE CHAP. we met there a state I will designate as D-a fine confused set of marine and fluvial phenomena. For away to the north the 'Como and Boque and t,,·o other lesser, but considerable streams, were) with the Rembwe, pouring down their waters in swirling, intermingling, intercIashing currents; and up against them, to make confusion worse confounded, came the tide, and the tide up the Gaboon is a swift strong thing, and irregular, and has a rise of eight feet at the springs, two-and-a-half at the neaps. The wind was lulled too, it being e,·en ing time. In this country it is customary for the wind to blow from the land from 8 P.M. until 8 A.M., from the south-west to the east. Then comes a lull, either an utter dead hot brooding calm, or light baffling winds and draughts that breathe a few panting hot breaths into your sai ls and die. Then comes the sea breeze up from the south-south-west or north-west, some days early in the forenoon, some days not till two or three o'clock. This breeze blows till sundown, and then comes another and a hotter calm. Fortunately for us we arrived off the head of the Gaboon estuary in this calm, for had we had wind to d.eal with we should have come to an end. There were one or two wandering puffs, about the first one of which sickened our counterpane of its ambitious career as a marine sail, so it came away from its gaff and spread itself over the crew, as much as to say, " Here, I've had enough of this sailing. I'll be a counterpane again." \Ne did a g reat deal of fine varied, spirited navigation, details of wh ich, however, I will not dwell upon because it was successful. "Ve made one or two circles, taking on water the while and then returned into the south bank backwards. At that bank we wisely stayed for the night, our meeting with the Gaboon so far having resu lted in wrecking our sail , Inaking Ngouta sea-sick and me exasperate; for from our noble ,·essel having during the course of it demonstrated for the first time her cataclysmic kicking power, I had had a time of it with my ·belongings on the bamboo stage. A basket constructed for catching human souls in, given me as a farewell gift by a valued friend , a witch doctor, and in which I kept the fe,,· thil)gS in life I really cared for, i.e., m}· brush, comb, tooth brush, and pocket handkerchiefs, went over the stern; while I Xy BAGGAGE O\'ERBOARD ! 347 was recO\'ering this ",ith my fishing line (such was the excellent nature of the thing, I am glad to say it floated) a black bag ' ,,'ith my blouses and such essentials went away to, leeward, Obanjo recoyered that, but meanwhile my little portmanteau containing my papers and trade tobacco slid off to leeward; and as it also contained geological specimens of the Sierra del Cristal, a massive range of mountains, it must have hopelessly sunk had it not been for the big black, who grabbed it. All my bedding, six Equetta cloths, given me by Mr. Hamilton in Opobo Ril'er before I came South, did get away successfully, but were picked up by means of the fishing line, wet but safe, After this I did not attempt any more Roman reclining couch luxuries, but stowed all my loose gear under the bamboo staging, and spent the night on the top of the stage, dozing precariously with my head on my knees. 'Vhen the morning broke, looking seaward I saw the wel- come forms of Konig and Perroquet Islands away in the distance, looking, as is their wont, like two lumps of cloud that hal'e dropped on to the broad Gaboon, and I felt that I was at last getting near something worth reaching, z'.e. Glass. \\'hich though still out of sight, I knew lay all'ay to the w~st of those islands on the northern shore of the estuary. And if an)' one had gi\'en me the choice of being in Glass within twenty-four hours from the mouth of the Rembwe, or in Faris or London in a "'eek, I would have chosen Glass without a moment's hesitation. Much as 1 dislike ''Vest Coast towns as a general rule, there are exceptions, and of all exceptions, the one I like most is undoubtedly Glass Gaboon; and its charms loomed large on that dank chilly morning after a night spent on a bamboo staging in an unfinished nati\·e canoe. r may as ,,'ell attempt to gil'e yo u here a brief sketch of the local geography of the head of the Gaboon estuary, for r seem the immediate English successor, in the way of travellers, to Mr. ";inwood Reade, who ,,'as here in '63. H e came up ti,e estuary, and up into the 'Como, which he ascended as far as the rapids-rapids caused as usual in this country by the rocks of the Sierra del Crista!' Above these rapids, I bear from nati\'e sources, the 'Como is formed by a succession of smaller CHAP. - - --------------- - streams having their origin in the mountain range. The 'Como falls into the Gaboon on its northern bank, at its eastern end, and is probably the largest of its tributaries_ A little d istance up, the 'Como, or more properly written , the :', to their captain; but \\'e XVI DU CHAILLU ha\'e great compensations for this. \¥e have no awful rows with each other in inconvenient places in Africa, or on our return home, and we can say to our critics: "Have you been there? No! Then go the,e or to whatever place you may happen to believe in! and till then-shut up." Mr. Winwood Reade accepted this sort of answer from Du Chaillu and went down to the regions of the Panavia Bight and Gaboon with a pre-determination to pro\'e Du Chaillu was wrong; and I am bound to say I think he utterly failed. He did not follow Du Chaillu's course throughout by any means, doing little more than going in behind Corisco Bay and up the Gaboon estuary and the 'Como, a: very good bit of work, and charmingly described in his Savage Aft-iea, but he was not in the country rich in gorillas in either place. Du Chaillu's journeys may be divided into two main groups, one of which is described in his first book, Explorations and Adwlltures ill Equatorial Aft-iea, r 86 I. During this journey he ascended the Muni Ri\'er as far as the Osheba 1 country, the 'Como and Bogue as far as the Sierra del Cristal, marched overland from the Gaboon estuary to the rivers of the Delta of the Ogo\\'e, and did a great deal of work in the whole of this great dangerous network; goi ng lip and down the N'Poulounay 2 and the O'Rembo and striking the upper waters of the Ngun ie, goi ng to and fro among the tribes of the Sierra del Crista I and Achangoland mountains. On his second journey, made in 1864---65, he was entirely in regions south of the Ogowe. He went into Fernan Vaz, followed the O'Rembo for some little distance, and then struck away east by south, crossing the Ngun ie at a point south of the spot he had reached on it when he discovered this river in r858. Thence he went on into the mountains of Achangoland, where he was attacked and had to beat a very hurried retreat to the ocean. ;\'early the whole of Du Chaillu's two journeys were 1 The Osheba are now recognised as Fans. 1 Mr. R. B. N. \,yalker says Du Chaillu's N'Poulounay should read Mplunie, and that it is merel), an Inferior stream connecting the lower main Ogowe ( Ngon)'~Oulange) and the Bandl.l, with the Feman Vaz, partly by means of the Og~.lote. B B 370 CO NGO F RANyA IS through successions of choice spots. Man y of his districts h ave not been revisited. In a few [ was his immediate successor. By ill -luck M. Du Chaillu on both journeys just missed striking the main stream of t he Ogowe, but he knew that it was there, and- the information he brought back of the exist- ence of a g reat river whose delta he recognised he had been explori ng) was received in F rance with a more proper spirit :'Vhat does a sweet green rose like that want roots for? [t only wants to float about on the ri,-er and be happy; so you pu~ precious humbug back, and it drills a\\-ay with a smile and gets up some suitable quiet inlet and then sends out roots galore longitudinally, and at e,-ery joint on them buds CONGO FRANyAIS CH.-\P. up another lettuce; and' if you go up its creek eighteen months or so after, with a little launch, it goes and winds those roots round your propeller. The fierce current of the wet season, when the main river SCOurs into the creeks, and the creeks start fierce currents of their own with their increased \raters, play great havoc with these lettuce beds, and plots of them get cut off from the main bodies. These plots float off down river, and as soon as they get into a bit of slack water or hitch on a ris ing sandbank, they collect all other floating things that come their way and start as islands. The grass soon chokes off its companion the lettuce, and makes the island habitable for other plants; and so you have a floating island. These float- ing islands have a weird fascination, and I never saw so many of them in any ri ver as in the Ogowe. To see a bit of seem- ing solid land , solemnly goi ng past you down the river, as if it were out on business; or if it is in tidal ways and you on a fixed point, to see it coming up to you, hanging about, and then retiring, is unsettling to one's general ideas of the propriety of nature. One of the largest of these floating islands I sa,,·, was in the Karkola River. It had got caught in an eddy made by another stream en tering this river, and it kept swimm ing round and round slowly and quietly. J have not here given an account of half the difficulties of navigating a tropical ri ver in the forest-region, because they are so numerous, and so many of them not to be guarded against. Those logs which from their specific g ravity float down just IInder water and strike you unexpectedly; and even those logs that float on the surface, are nasty things to meet on an ink-black night. I well remember the miscellaneous joys we happened on once when dropping down the Ogowe in the dark in a small canoe. Half the way it was a steeplechase for the canoe over floating logs. Sometimes she refused her fences point-blank and butted them; sometimes she would climb up them and fa ll over on the other side; and even my experienced native companion owned that it was difficult to tell, during the subsequent aquatic sports which her cre\\" indulged in, which was the bottom of the canoe and which was the unso phisticated log. Sometimes she would clear her log- fence at a bound in a showy wa)" but then when she came down the other side, she went too deep and filled herself and TAKING THE TIMBER foundered, and so the only thing ,\as to pole the logs off. Some of those logs, by the by, haQ.gueer ways with them. One, on being poked on the end as it floated towards, us opened its front section and bit the pole with such a grip that the man using it let go all one time. Yes, I dare say it was a crocodile -still African vegetation is a queer thing. You would naturally think that, in spite of sandbanks with cliff-edges down stream, of sections of the continent floating round, and of logs liable to bite and not liable to bite, you had at least one thing left to rely on-the bank. But that bank may be all right, and again, as the captain of the late 5S. Sparrow \\'ould say, it mayn't. A friend of mine, for example, \\'ho got stuck in a launch up a river-creek on a sand- bank, got a hawser out, and winding it round some mangroves on the bank, proceeded" to have her off in no time" with the steam winch. She did not budge an inch, but the African continent did: the whole bit of bank came away, and down on the boat came the trees with a swish, burying everything and everybody in branches and foliage. As he said, we were ., like the babes in the wood after robins had been along, on a big scale"; and he also stated, as we climbed up on top of our arboreal superstruoture, that" Africa was a rotten continent." C H APTER XV II THE LOG OF TJ-IE L-IFA YETTE Du ri ng a voyage undertaken to the island of Corisco, to which is added some account of the present condition of the island and its inhabitants, and also of that of Cape Esterias and things in general, as is cus- tomary with the author. As soon as I returned to Glass I natu rally went to di scourse with Doctor Nassa u on Fetish. "Ve discoursed, I may mention, at length and to my advantage. In one of these t alks the doctor mentioned that there were lakes in the centre of the Island ·of Corisco, and that in those lakes were quantities of fi sh, which fi sh were always and onl y fished by the resident ladies, at duly appoi nted seasons. Need less to say, I felt it a so lemn duty to go and investigate persona lly; and equally needless to say, Doctor Nassau gave me every assistance, which took the form of lending me a small vessel called the Lafayette. She had been long in his possession, but of late years little used, s till she was a fin e seaworthy boat, so with a crew headed by the D octor's factotum, Eveke, who was a native of the said island, together with a few friends of his, we set sa il. L eft Libreville at 8 lUr. so as to get full advantage of wind and tide. D octor Nassau kind ly comes along the II"harf to see us clear away. \~Ie then make for the guard-ship, to pass our papers, and do th is in an unyachtsman like way, lowering our gaff too soon, hence have ig nom iniously to row alongside. The off-shore breeze blows strong this morn ing and the tide is running out like a mill-race, so the Laft7J,ette flies seaward CI:!. XVII THE LAFA YETTE gallantly. Libreville looks very bright and pleasing-with its red roofs and white walls amongst the surrounding wealth of dark green mango trees; bUtwe S0011 leave it behind, passing along in front of the low, rolling hills, all densely clad with forests, out to Cape Clara, or Cape Jo inville as some maps will ha\'e it-the end of the northern shore of the Gaboon estuary. vVhen we get to the Cape we find a pretty fair sea running) and Eveke, whose seamanship I am beginning to view with suspicion, lets her gybe, and I get knocked into the bottom of the boat by the boom, and stay there. There is nothing like entering into the spi rit of a thing like this if you mean to enjoy it, and after al l that's the wisest thing to do out here, for there's nothing between enjoying it and dy ing of it. The sun is broiling hot; everything one has got to s it on or catch hold of is as hot as a burning brick, and there is no cabin, nor even locker, on our craft; so I prop myself up against my collecting-box and lazily take stock of the things round me, and write. My crew are a miscellaneous lot of M'pongwe, black but not comely. One gentleman, howe,·er, evidently thinks he is, as he has a beautiful pair of carefully tended whiskers, rare adjuncts to the African. He also has a pair of kerseymere trousers, far too tight for him; but a man with whiskers" all same for one with white man" must dress the part, and trousers are scarce in this country. Our cargo consists of two bags of salt, several bags and boxes of sand for ballast, se\'eral bottles of water for drinking, a bundle of bedding-a loan from the Doctor, and a deck chair-a loan from Mr. Hudson. Owing to the La.fa),ettc ha\'ing no deck , the latter is" not required on the \'oyage," and is folded up. I observe with anxiety that the cargo is not stowed in a manner that would meet with the approval of Captain iVIurray, and decide to get dunnage and do it in style the first port we call at. Can't possibly sh ift cargo in this sea. The crew drink the ,,·ater in such quantities that there will be an ocean tragedy if we get becal med. Vole run along close in shore from Cape Clara to Cape E sterias-a fine, sandy, rock-strewn shore, backed by a noble bush-for eight miles, The land fall s away then, for Esterias is the southernmost point of Corisco Bay. Close to Cape Esterias THE LOG OF THE LAFA YETTE CHAP. I see the familiar bark-built ':illage that betokens Fans, and on sighting this we change our course and lay one apparently for the Brazilian ports. The Lafa},ette flies along before a heavy sea, and from my position at the bottom of her I can see. nothing but her big white mainsail and her mast with its shrouds and stays stand - ing out clear, rocking to and fro, against the hard blue sky; and just the white crests of the waves as they go dancing by. I have nothing to hear save the pleasantest sounds in the world- the rustle of the sail and the swish of the waves as they play a longside the vessel. Now and then there is added to these the lazy, laughing talk of the black men; and now and then an extra li vely wave throws its crest in among us. Soon all the crew drop softly off to sleep, Eveke joining them, so I rouse up and take the mai n sheet and the tiller and keep her so. I feel as if I were being baked to a cinder, but there's no help fo r it, and some of it is very pleasant. About four o'clock I see two lumps of land on the sky-line. I wake E veke up and he seems surpri sed at my not knowing what they are. " That's Cori sco and Bana, sir," says he. I explain to Eveke, as I hand o,'er the navigation to him, that everyone has not been born on Corisco, and the fact of his having had thi s advantage is the reason of hi s being pilot now; and I reseat myself in the bottom of the boat and carefully look over the side, mindful of that boom palaver. We head for the bigger and most western bit of land, soon seeing the detail s of its undulating,. black-green forests. When we get within a mile, Eveke asks me to wake up the man in front of me, and I stir him firmly, but gently, with a chart; for I know what waking black men leads to sometimes; and when he rouses l a rder him to wake up the others, and in a few minutes they are all more or less awake, even the man on the look-out. They wash their mouths out with sea-waterJ and then re-commence their laugh- ing talk ing and water-drinking again. J \A/e run into a small , sandy-shored, wooded bay where, as I find is Eveke's habit, we [ower our gaff prematurely and drift, in the proper way, lei surely towards the above, stern foremost. At last the Lafayette, finding everything is left to her, says; " Look here, you fellows, if you don't help' CORISCO I won't play'," and stops and commences to swing broadside on, So the oars-or sweeps I should call them, for we have e"idently returned to fourteenth century seamanship-are got out and in a few minutes we are bumping violently on the strand, \Ve let go the anchor, make all snug and go ashore, \\'hen ashore, of course with the exception of myself and the pilot, the crew indulge in a dance to stretch their cramped limbs. As no inhabitants turn up, Eveke runs up into the little "ill age that fronts us and hunts a few out, who come and stare at us in a woolly stupid way, very different from my' friends, the vivacious Fans. Eveke has tremendous greetings with them-particu larly with the young ladies, He hastily informs me that he is related to them, I hope he is. He says most of the people are away at the farms-which is not an affliction to me, for Eveke wastes enough time on those we ha ,'e got, and they seem to me a churlish lot for Africans, The only question they ask us is ; Have ,,'e any tobacco?' Corisco is nearly out of tobacco, owing to the weather having been too rough of late for them to get across either to Eloby, or Cocco Beach, where the factories are, for more, They are gratified by our affi rmati\-e answer, and s it down, in a line, on a large log, and beam at us in a subdued wa)" while we get the things we want off the LafaJ,ette and finish securin g her for the night. This being done, Eveke and I go off to his father's house-his father, the Rev. Me. Ibea, being the sole representative of the ."..merican Presbyterian mission now on Corisco Island. I ha"e heard much of the strange' variety of scenery to be found on this island: how it has, in a miniature way, rivers, Jakes, forests, prairies, s\\-amps and mountains; and ollr walk demonstrates to me the baldness of the truth of the statement. The tide being nol\' nearly in, we cannot keep along the beach all the way, "hich is a mercy-for the said beach is, where it is dry, of the softest, whitest sand imaginable; where it is wet, of the softest, pink-dove-coloured sand, and it is piled with fresh, rotting, and rotten seaweed into which, at every step, you sink OI'er your ankles in an exhausting way, and on the surface of which you observe centipedes crawling, and, need- less to say, sand fli es galore. \ ,yhen we come to a point of any C C THE LOG OF THE LAFA VETTE CHAP. one of the many little bays or indentations in the coast-line where the sea is breaking, we clamber up the bank and turn inland, s till ankle deep in sand, and go through this museum of physical geography. First a specimen of grass land, then a long a lane of thickly pleached bush, then down into a wood with a little (at present) nearly dried up swamp in its recesses; then up out on to an open heath ,,·hich has recently been burnt and is covered with dead bracken and scorched oil palms; then through a village into grass again, and back to the beach to plough our way through seaweed across another bay ; then round some remarkable rocks, up into a wood, then g rass, and more bush and more beach, and up among a cluster of coco-palm ~, more grass; and then a long stretch of path with one side of it a thick hedge ,,·hich is encroaching in a way that calls for energetic lopping, for the bush leans so across the path that you also have to lean at an angle of nearly 45° towards the other side. I begin to despair, my boots being full of sand, and to fear ,,·e shall ne,·er get through the s pecimens before nightfall. There is such an air of elaborate completeness about this museum, and we ha,-e not even com- menced the glacier or river departments. Howe,-er, at length we see· what seems to be the entrance to an English park, and coming up to this find a beautiful a,-enue of mango trees. Corisco evidently feels the dry season severely. The dry sandy soil is thickly strewn with dead leaves. At the end of the avenue there is a pretty wooden house, painted white, with its doors and window-frames painted a bold bright blue. Around it are a cluster of outbuildings like it, each mounted on poles, the little church, the store, and the house for the children in the mission school. A troop of children rush out and greet Eveke effusively. One of them, I am informed, is his brother, and he commences to bubble out cOlwersation in Benga. I send Eveke off to- find his mother, thinking he will like to get his greetings with her over unobserved) and after a few minutes she comes forward to greet me,-a pretty, bright- looking lady whom it is hard to believe old enough to be Eveke's mother; and not only E,·eke's but the mother of a lot of strapping young women who come forward with her, XVll A NATURAL BREAKWATER and the grandmother of other strapping young women mixed up among them. I must really try and find out which is which. Until I do so perhaps it will be diplomatic to regard them all as her daughters. Mrs. Ibea insists, in the kindliest way possible, on my t aking possession of her own room. Mr. Ibea is away, she says, on an evangelising visit to the mainland at Cape St. John (the northern extremity of Corisco Bay), intending to call at Eloby Island; so he may not be here for some days, and she promptly g ives me tea and alligator pears, both exceedingly welcome. . The views from the windows of my clean and comfortable room are very beautiful. The house stands on a high pro- montory called Alondo Point, the turning point of the south and west sides of the island, and almost overhangs tbe se~. A reef of rock runs out at the foot of the cliff for about a mile, on which the sea breaks constantly. The g reat rollers of the South Atlan tic, meeting here their first check since they left Cape Horn and the A mericas, fly up in sheets of foam with a never-ending thunder. I go to bed early, thankfully observing that the gay mosquito curtain is entirely "for dandy "- decorative and not defensi\'e. The obtaining of specimens of fi sh from the lakes in the centre of the island being my main object in visiting Corisco, I set to work by starting immediately after breakfast to the bay that we came to last night, and which I will call Nassau Bay in future. I go along the same variegated path I came by yesterday. E veke has slept at the village in the Bay among his relatives so as to keep an eye, he says, on the La/a)'efte. \>Vhen I find him, he says that only women can catch the lake fi sh, and that they always catch them in certain baskets, and as these have to be made they cannot be ready to-da/. H aving hea rd Corisco is famous for shells, and having seen nothing on any of the many beaches on the southern side of the island more conchologically charming than half a dozen dilapidated whelks, I ask where the main deposits of shells are. E veke says there is any quantity of them on the other little islands, Laval to the south, and Balla to the S.E, in Corisco Bay. To his horror I say I will go to those islands now, and "'e get our scattered crew together and C C 2 THj': LO G OF THE LAFA YETTE CHAI'. the Lafayette under way, and run across first to some sand- banks, whose heads are exposed at low water-beautiful stretches of dove-coloured sand, but apparently not even a whelk as far as shells go. Up through the sand are sticking thousands of little white tubes, apparently empty; but after a few minutes,-having parted from the riot of the crew and quietness reigning-I find, when the sand is wetted by the foam, some lovely little sea anemones looking out of the tops of the tubes. After a t ime I rejoin the crew and find they have dug out a few olive and harp shell s, but nothing remark- able; and I hurt Eveke's feelings by saying I consider Corisco, as a collecting g round for shells, a fraud. He assures me solemnly that in the wet season, which has calmer seas than the dry, when the sun comes out and shines upon the exposed sandbanks, they are covered with thousands of shells, but from his description I think they are mostly olives. We go across from the sandbank to Laval, a little rock island with a patch of bush on its summit, and from its edges -the size does not run to shores-I get some sponges. Then on to Bafia, a larger island, which has a population of rats only, from whence it is sometimes called Rat Island-but I get no more shell s. Before I get back to Corisco, Eveke solemnly assures me that the women with their fishing baskets will be ready to-morrow early. Get up and hurry off early to Nassau Bay. \;\,Tomen not ready. vVait for two hours sitting on the steps of a native's house, which is built in the European style, and situated across the top of the village. There are two other houses like this one, I notice, between here and Alondo, each ostentatiously placed aCrGss the street. At last Eveke comes and says, "The women make trouble. They no get the baskets ready to-day; they have them ready to-morrow for sure, but not to-day." Internally blessing Eveke and the ladies, I go to see ho\\" the world is made along the southern shores of the i"sland-along the dove-coloured sand, hedged on my right hand by the spray wall of the su rf, and on the left by low-growing bushes, flowering profusely with long sprays of intensely sweet-scented, white mimosa-like flower. Behind these rises the high bush of one of the miniature forests. Every now and then I pass a path XVII CAVES OF CORISCO to some natiye village, which, though hidden behind the trees, has its existence betrayed by the canoes, three or four of them drawn high up out of the reach of the surf under a group of coco-palms, which, as a general rule, stand as a gateway to these paths. About a mile along, perhaps a little more, the point runs out which makes the eastern end of Nassau Bay, the largest bay on this southern side of the is land, and the only reasonably safe anchorage on all Corisco's shores. This point is composed of similar rock to that which juts out and forms the western end of this bayl The rocks are exceed- ingly strange and picturesque. The surf play has hollowed them Ollt underneath, until the upper part overhangs like a sno\\' cornice; and in several places masses of rock jut out beyond the others, weathered into strange forms, looki'ng wonderfully like the heads of great lizard and serpent mon- sters stretched out, gazing to\\-ards the mainland of Africa. Some of these points of rock have trees growing along the neck of them, looking like a bristling mane. The under part of the rock is eaten back into a concavity, and in this again are eaten out groups of caves, a net\vork of them intercommu- nicating in places, and pillars of rock rising in them from floor to ceiling. In the floor are perfectly lovely, clear pools of sea- water; the rock in which they are hollowed out is a soft gray-green, and some zoophyte of an exquisite bright mauve or pink-\-iolet colour grows in a broad band round the upper edge; and in the water, lambent with the light reflected from the roof, float in a tangled skein the seaweeds-the softest, sweetest commingling of golden-browns, greens, and reds imaginable. These little caves are gems of beauty, and nuthing but becoming suddenly aware that the tide ·is rapidly coming in, makes me tear myself away and return across the bay, past where the Lafayette lies anchored, towards Alondo. After a mile over this trying track of rotten seaweed, on going round a little point, 1 find a lot of wild, uncivil children, who yell and dance round me half-terrified, but wholly malignant_ They spit at me and shout, (( Frenchy no good/' "Frenchy no good," in English, such as it is, and equally broken Spanish. At first I think, Well! France is no business of mine; but I 1 Specimen identified by the Geological Sun'ey as calcareous gri t. 390 THE LOG OF THE LAFA YETTE C:-IAP. instantly receive a severe rap on my moral knuckles from my conscience, which tells me that as I chose to place myself under the protection of the French flag above Njole, and a great protection it undoubtedly was, I must, in my turn, pro- tect it from insult when it flies on the Lafayette in foreign waters. Moreover, the blood of the Vikings that is in me gets up on its own account at such treatment, and I make up my mind to su itably correct those children forthwith, particularly a male albino about fourteen years old, who is clad in the remains of an antique salt sack, which he weal'S unaltered, in- verted over him. Unfortunately, holes have been roughly cut in the bottom and sides of it to let out his unnecessary head and arms; but at this identical moment I catch sight of a sweet-looking nun doin g needle-work as she sits on the rocks. I go up to her and pass compliments, but do not complain to her about her flock, because she must be perfectly aware how they are going on, and secondly I am sure she is too meek to deal with them, even if she disapproves. Moreover, my know- ledge of Spanish consists almost entirely of expressions of thanks and greetings-expressions which you are most in need of when dealing with Spaniards, as a general rule. So, finding she knows no English, I bow myself off and go my way round the rocky point that form s the end of another shallow bay, looking ostentatiously tired and feeble. Round that rocky point after me come the yelling pack led by the albino, and there things happen to those children that cause them to prefer the nun's company to mine, I make my way on, and to my dismay find the sea flying and churning up in a roaring rock cauldron at the extremity of the next point, so that .1 cannot get past. There is no path up inland that I can reach without passing the place where I have left the nun sitting. I feel naturally shy about doing this because of the male albino having go ne off leaving his sack with me, and I do not know the Spanish idiom for " Please, ma'am, it came off in my hand ;". though doubtless this idiom exists, for there are parlour-maids and wine-glasses in Spain, and I am su re they employ this phrase every time when, in washing a v.rine-gl"ass, they have g ripped one end like a vice and wrung the other off And not the albino alone has got out of repair this XVII ~IAGIC IN ill.'\TCHES 39 1 side of the rock, for neither that promising young lady who spat in my face, nor the o~ who threw sand in my eyes are what they were this morning. There is. nothing for it then but the dwa rf cliff; so I climb it and get into the bush and try and strike a path. I get into a plantain plantation, "'hich means there is a \'illage close at hand, and on the further side I come into a three-hut one, and find a most amiable old lady sunning herself in the centre of it. Unfortunately she does not know any English, but I shed a box of luci fe r matches on her, wishing to show t hat r mean well, and knowing that one of the great charms of a \\'hite man to a black is this habit of shedding thi ngs. It is their custom to hang round one in their native wilds in the hope something \\'ill be shed, either intentionally or un inten- tionally. Not, I fancy, for the bald sake of the article itsel f, but from a sort of sporting interest in what the next thing shed will be, I know it is my chief charm to t hem, and they hang round wondering whether it wi ll be matches, leaf tobacco, pocket-handkerchiefs, or fish-hooks; and when the phenomena flag they bring me various articles for sale to try to get me into working order again. My' present old lady is glad of her matches and they brighten up her intelligence, and she begins to understand I want something. After experimenting on me with a bunch of plan tains and a paw-paw unsuccessfully, she goes and fetches a buxom young woman who soon comprehends I want Mrs. r bea's house, and instantly she and the old lady escort me down a grass path and through some galleries of specimens of physical geography, \Ve are soon joined by two pretty young girls, and wind our \\'ay back to the shore again on the further side of the point that had driven me inland. The elders then take themselves off after a mutual interchange of compliments and thanks; the young women come on with me. Mighty pretty pictures they make "'ith their soft dusky skins, lithe, rounded figures, pretty bro\\'n eyes, and surf-"'hite teeth showing between their laughing lips as they dance before me; and I cannot help thinking what a comfort they would be to a shi pwrecked mariner and how he would enjoy it al l. On we go) climbing round every rocky point until we 392 THE LOG OF THE LAFA YETTE CHAP. find the tide too far in for any more beach at all, and strike into an inland path. These Corisco paths require under- standing to get on with. They all seem to start merely with the intention of taking you round a headland because the tide happens to be in; but, like all African paths, once they are started Allah or S heitan only knows where ther \\·ill go, and their presiditlg spirits might quote Kipling and sing, "God knows where we shall go, dear lass, and the deuce knows \\·hat we shall see," to the wayfarer who follows them. One thing and one thing only you can safely prognosticate of the African path ; and that is that it will not follow the shortest line between any two g iven points. A Corisco one turns up off the beach, springs inland say ing to you, "\~lan t to go round that corner, do you? Oh! well; just come and see some of our noted scenery while YOll are here," and takes you through a miniature forest, small swamp, and a prairie. (C It's a pit)<' says the path, " not to call at So-and-so's "illage no\\' we are so near it," and off you have to go through a patch of g rass and a plantation to the village. "Vife must hurry up and get back to that beach agai n. Blessed if I hadn't nearly forgotten what r came out for!" it continues; and back on to the beach it plunges, landing you about fifty yards from the place where you left it on account of the little headland. At last we reach Alondo, and I give my guides buttons, reels of cotton, pocket-handkerchiefs, fi sh-hooks, and matches, and we part friends; they to show their treasures in their "illage, and to g ive rise to the hope that I may get lost on Corisco again, soon and often, I to tea and talk with Mrs. Ibea. I tell her E,'-eke had sa id in the forenoon, when I last saw him, that he was coming home in the evening; but he does not turn lip and his mother says she " expects he is courting his mother- in-law." Regard ing tl,is as probably a highl y interesting piece of native custom, in the interests of Science, I prop open my sleepy eyelids and listen. After a ll it isn't-but only a piece or strange native mor31lity. His lad y -I o\-e, it seems, is house- keeper to a man on the main land who is always talking of leaving the district but doesn't do so, so the marriage gets perpetually postponed. I hope that man won't tr), the patient XVII NATIVE TRADER KILLED 393 affection of the engaged pair too long, for I should fancy it might lead to some internal disorder. I heard a quantity of details of Corisco family affairs- one very sad one, of how a young man who \vas a nati,-e trader for one of the German houses up the Cameroons Ri\'er, came to his death a short time ago, The firm had decided to break factory at the place where he was stationed, a thing the natives of thi s country cannot bear; for having a factory that has once been established among them removed, brings them into derision and contempt among their neigh- bours. If You're a pretty town," say the scornful. "You can't keep a factory. Yah!" Moreover, a factory in a town is am amusement and a convenience, let alone being lucrative to the native. \Vell, this unfortunate young Benga man was left ' behind by the white men to see the last of the goods cleared out and brought down river; and while he was faithfully looking to these things, the local nati ves attacked him and killed him and" cut him up like a fish into small pieces and threw them into the water," says Mrs. Ibea. These native sub-traders ha\'e I'ery risky lives of it, travelling undefended, with goods, amongst the sa\'age tribes on this South-\~Iest Coast. They frequently get killed and robbed, and the only thing that keeps them from not being so treated still more frequently is that the commercial instinct of the bush tribes warns them that it "'ould completely stamp out trade. In Corisco Bay the ril'er Muni, a name given it by the Portuguese early navigators from the native word for (( take care," is notoriousl), unsafe-all the more so because there is no settled European authority over it, France and Spain being at loggerheads about the ownershi p of the piece of coast from Cape Esterias to Batta. This had doubtless a good deal to do with those children's conduct this afternoon; for Corisco Island and Eloby Islands are Spanish possessions, and are under a Vice- Governor to the Governor of Fernando Po. I remember when I was out before, being led to believe that the Vice- Governorship of Eloby was a sort of pensioning-off place for Spanish officials who had gone mad, or that it was held by London County Councillors in disguise. One of the Vice- Governors was truly great at domestic legislation, and nothing 394 THE LOG OF TH E LA FA YETTE CHAP. but the habit of forgetting in a day or so the orders he had issued made the place habitable at all. At one time there was an ordinance that all lights on the island should be out at 10 P.M., and as your African is a sad dog for late hours, this bored him terribly. Shortly afte·r, there was another that all goats should be kept tied up. This fairly ran the nati ve off his legs trying to catch them. The goats, I believe, liked it, regarding it as a ki nd of a game, though they made an awful ba-aaing wh ich kept the lightless Africans awake. I do not know what the present Governor is like. Maybe he would have seen fit to regard me as a fili buster com ing in fly ing the French flag, intent on annex ing Corisco to Gabool1 ) and might have sent me off to prison at Fernando Po, as happened to Mr. Ibea once for some religious palaver he got into with the two Catholic p riests who are on the island. These priests, and I belie\·e three nuns, are the only white live people on the island now. Dead white people are there in the two cemeteries in a sad quantity; for in the early fifties, when the American Presbyterian Mission opened work on this Coast, their opin ion was that the fever risk for the white . mini sters wou ld be less on th is island, separated as it is by s~me twenty miles of sea from the mainland, and that they could establish a station on it and live in comparati ve safety, "'mile they educated nati ves to go and do the work on the mainland. But Cori sco Island behaved like every other Vilest Coast" sanatorium," and demonstrated that it was no healthier than its neighbouring country; and several ministers having died and most of the remainder suffering severely from fever, they decided to move on to the con ti nent, where they could carryon their work directly and could not be much worse off than they were on the island. Dr. Nassau, of whom I have already spoken, and Mrs. H og- den, whose husband lies buried on Corisco, a re the su rviving members of the early days of the Ameri can Presbyterian Mis- sion; and on the Mission moying to the continent, the Doctor, more suo, made some wonderful journeys hundreds of miles into the interior, where no white man h ad been before, and where in many places no white man has been since. I am quite aware that Dr. Nassau was the first white man to send home XVII DR. NASSAU 395 gorillas' brains; still I deeply regret he has not done more fOt- science and geography, Had he but had Livingstone's con- scientious devotion to taking notes and publishing them, we shou ld know far more than we do at present about the hinterland from Cameroons to the OgolVe, and should have, for ethnological purposes, an immense mass of thoroughly reliable information about the manners and religions of the tribes therein, and Dr. ~assau's fame would be among the greatest of the few great African explorers-not that he wou ld care a row of pins for that. I beg to state I am not grumbling at him, hO\l'ever, as I know he would say I was, because of his disparaging remarks on my pronunciation of M'pongwe names, but entirely from the justifiable irritation a student of , fetish feels at knowing there is but one copy of this collection of materials, and that that copy is in the form of a human being and will disappear \vith him before it is half learnt by us, who cannot do the things he has done, Get up very early, make a hasty preakfast, and walk to ",,"assau Bay, full of pleasant anticipations of a day's good fish- ing in those lakes, When I arrive at the vi llage find I need not have hurried, so sit down for my usual wait. i\ t last E\'eke, who has been making demonstrations of great activity in getting the ladies under way, succeeds in so doing-or, I fancy, more properly speaking, those ladies.' who are ready, and disposed to start on their own account, do so, Se\'eral men accompany the party and we leave the village by a path that goes round to the right of the plank- built house, plunges forthwith into a little ra\'ine, goes across. a dried swamp, up a hill and out on to an open prairie, all in about twenty minutes, The prairie has recently been burnt, and is a stretch of blackened green \I'ith the ruins of a few singed, or burnt up, trees rising from it. These burnt lands are interesting, though they make one in, a horrid mess, I now understand the rationale of the state- ment the nati\'es have often made to me; namely, that if you fire the grass too soon, or when there is no \I'ind, you kill it for good, If you \I'ait until it is "dry too much" it is all right and you don't kill it. This is because the grass grows in a lot of bulb-like bottom tufts; when the outer and upper parts THE· LO G OF THE LAFA YETTE CHAP. are quite d ry it catches fire and, fanned by the wind , the fire licks this up and s\\'eeps on \\'ith great rapidity, lea\'ing the moist heart of the tuft comparati\'ely uninjured; and this sends out fn~sh green leaves when the wet season's tornado rain comes down on it. 'vVhereas if }ou burn it too soon, and without wind, the outer stuff, being insufficiently dry to burn with this rapidity, smoulders, and the heat of it lasting longer, k ill s the inside, Some of the low-gro\\'ing, bamboo-like palms act in the same way; but should there happen to be a lot of dry grass, or their own dry cast-off lea\'es round them, close up to the stem, their vital part jllSt above the root gets injured, and they die or make ,'ery bad cOll\'alescences, I do not know whether it is so in (orisco, but at other places where I ha\'e been there is always a fire-doctor, \\'ho by means of ju-ju, backed as ju-ju often is by sound common sense and local knowledge, decides which is the proper day to set the grass on fire, vVe go across this prairie into a little wood mainly made up of beautiful wild fig-trees, \\' ith their muscles sho\\'ing through the skin like our own beech-trees' muscles do, only the wild fi g stem is whitish-grey and most picturesquely twisted and branch ing. Then out of this on to another prairie, larger and unburnt. During the whole of our walk from the village we ha\'e been yelling in prolonged, intoned howls for ladies, whose presence is necessary to the legiti, mate carrying on of our fi shing-lady representati\'es of each village being expected to attend and see the fi sh are properly divided, I cannot find there is' any feti sh at the bottom of th is custom, and th ink its being restricted to the ,\'Omen is ori g inally fou nded on the male African's aversion to \\'ork; and in the representation of the yillages, on the Africans' distrust of each other. Notably, and grievously, we howl for En-gou-ta-a-a and Engouta comes not ; so we throw Qursel\-es dO\\' 11 on the deliciously soft, fine, golden brown grass, in the sun, and wait for the tardy, absent ones, smoking, and laughing, and sleeping, and when any of the avocations palls on any of us we rise up and howl " Engouta," After about two mortal hours of this, and X\"Ir CORISCO COl\FLAGRATIO:;S 397 \I'hen my companions have for some time settled down, guite reconciled , to sleep peacefultx..- I hear a crackle-crackle-l ike fusillade of miniature guns. Looking towards the place whence the sound comes I notice a cloud of bright blue ,make sur- mounting a rapidly advancing wall of crimson fire. I get up and mention thi s fact briefly to my drowsy companions, adding in the case of the more profound sleepers an enlightening kick, and make an exemplary bee-line to the bush in front of us. The others follow my example \I'ith a rapidity I should not have expected in their tribe, but, in spite of some very creditable and spirited spri nt performances, three members of the party get scorched and spent the balance of the afternoon sitting in mud-holes, comforting themselves \I'ith the bal my black slime. The fire swept across our bit of the prairie in the li ne of the breeze, and died out when it came to the g reen wood in a very short time; and short ly afterwards the absent ones, including Engouta, turn up. These ladies explained "some fool man been done burn" a patch on the other side to plant manioc. The whole island is busy planting now before the rains come on , Some days ago he thought the fire was out, and safe, but it wasn't, and the stiff breeze fanned it up. "People should be careful with fire," I say senten tiously and they all agree with me, the scorched ones enthusiastically. A little clamber down into the wood we are in brings us to the lakes. There is a little chain of them-they are just basins in the rock strata of varying sizes, and each has a thick lining of black mud, The water is at its lowest now, as it is the end of the dry season, and the water they contain is, I think , the accumulation of rain water from wet seasons. As far as I can see there are no streams running into or out of them. I n the wet season probably there may be both. One of them the ladies refuse to fish in, say ing it was too deep; poss ibly being a deep crack in the rock like the one you see as you pass the enclosed grounds of the Cathol ic Mission at Evangeianda; and I think they are prevented from evaporating, as that one does in the dry season, by being surrounded with the dense bush of thi s tangled little wood, which occupies the hollow of the interior of the island in which they are situated, THE LOG Of THE LAFA YETTE CHAP. Even with thi s I believe they would dry, were the dr)' season the hot season, as it is on the Gold Coast. Most of these lakes have an encircling rim of rock, from which, if you are a fisher, ) au jump down into unmitigated black slime to your knees ; you then waddle, and sqHatter, and grunt, and sky- lark g,merally, to the shallow remnant of "'ater. If it is one of the larger lakes, you and you r companions dri,'e in two rows of stakes, cutting each other at right angles, more or less, in the centre of the lake, This being done, the women, with the specially made baskets-affairs shaped like bed-pillows with one side open- form a line with their backs towards the banks, their faces to the water, in the enclosure; toe other women go into the water by the stakes, and splash with hands and feet and sticks as hard as they can, needless to say shouting hard the while, The terrified fi sh fly from them into the baskets, and a re scooped up by the peck, In little basins of water the stakes are not required, but the rest of the proceedings are the same, some women standing with their backs to the bank, holding their baskets' mouths just under water, and scooping up the fish fl ying from the beaters in the middle, Fro'm twelve to fourteen bushel s is the usual result of the day's fishing, and the fish are divided between the representa- t ives and distributed among the villages, A tremendous fi sh dinner ensues in the e,'ening, and whatiish are left are smoked and kept as relishes and dainties until next fishing time comes round. I was told on the island that this fishing takes place e,'ery year in August, that is after the farm planting and just before the tornado rains come on, On the mainland the tradition is that it takes place here every t,,'o years, in August. I dare say this was the case in old days; although, by the way, I heard that this regular institution of fishing with its repre- sentatives, &c., was of comparatively recent introduction, and arose from the fear that the fi sh, by irregular and constant fish- ing, would be exterm inated. Corisco would not accept this view at all, and insisted that the fashion had come down from the old times, meaning it had an unlimited antiquity. But with all this formality, after all I had gone through, and all my XVII A BITTER D ISAPPOINTMENT 399 walks and ,,'aitings, those wretched fish were nothing and nobody else but an African mud-fish, a b rute I cordial ly hate, for whenever I ask nati,'e ' fi5l1ermen for fish, they bring me him; if I start catch ing fish for myself, nine times in ten it's him I catch. I t was a bitter disappointment, for I had looked forward to getting some strange fish, or strongly modified form, in the middle of this little sea island, in fres h-water, some twenty miles from the mainland shore. But there! it's Afri ca a ll over; presentingone\\-jth famil iar objects when one least requ ires them, like that razor in the heart of Gori lla-land; and un- familiar, such as elephants and buffaloes when you are out for a quiet stroll armed with a butterfly net, to say noth ing of snakes in one's bed and scorpions in one's boots and sponge, One's view of life gets quite distorted; I don't belie,'e I should be in the least surprised to see a herd of hippo stroll on to the line out of one of the railway tunnels of Notting Hill Gate station, \Vest Africa is undoubtedly bad for one's mind. I did not go completely round all the lakes, baving to watch the fishing, and at last, finding there ,,'as only this one kind of fish to be had, and that it was getting late, I set off on my weary, long walk back to Alondo, where I found on arriving that Mrs. l bea had got tea waiti ng for me, and that Mr. l bea was back from his evangelising mission to Cape St. John and Eloby. He is a splendidly built, square-shouldered man, a pure Benga, of the finest type, full of energy and enthusiasm, I found ' some difficulty in accepting his statement regarding the age of Mrs. Ibea and himself, and I still think he s tuck a good ten years on . His views on nati,'e social questions I had less difficulty in accepting, more particularly those which coincide with my own. We talked about the Fan-the backbone of native, and a good big factor in white conversation, all along here. I n this part of the world the descent of this great tribe is ousting the older inhabitants of the land. Mr, Ibea says that one of the first white members of the American Presbyterian Mission that came to this Coast some thirty years ago, made a journey into the interior behind Batanga, At the further end of this journey he heard of the coming Fan, even then in a state of migration westwards; and, from what he heard, THE LOG OF THE LA.FA YETTE CHAP. on his return to Corisco he prophesied that befo re another ten years were past they wou ld have the Fan to deal with on the sea-coast districts. Natives and Europeans both laughed at him ; but befol·e the ten years were past the Fans were m·er the border li ne of the M'pongwe and Igalwa, but the prophet was not a li ve to see the realisat ion of his prophecy. At this present time, nhe F"ns are, in a few places, down by the sea- shore itself, busy learnin g how to manage a canoe on the open a nd deep sea-not yet so proficient in the art as the M'pongwe or Benga, who are great masters, but getting on well with their studies, for they are an indefatigable race) and plucky, which is the main element in any race's success. I t is very evident to an observe r that the F ans on the Ogowe are comparatively recent, and that when they came they brought with them no experience in dealing with a great rapid river; bu t they tackle it in a game way, and are getting on. I n add ition to the causes of decay that the presence of the Fan among the Coast tribes brings into play, there are many others helping the extinction of the latter. It a lways seems to me a wonder we have so many traces of early man as we have, when one sees here in Africa how one tribe sweeps out another tribe that goes like the foam of a broken wave into the Ewigkeit before it, leaving nothing, a fter the lapse of a century, to show it ever existed. Here the Dualla and the M'pongwe, both tribes now be- com ing on their own account extinct, have thei r trad itions of havi ng come down to the sea-board from nearly the same reg ion from whence the Fan are now swarming. The in- hab itants of Fernando Po, the so-ca lled Bubi, probably the o ldest race now on the sea-board, remember the coming of the M'pongwe too, for they say these M'pongwe drove them out of the districts round Gaboon. How long ago this happened it is impossible to say, owing to the absence of monuments, and the weak-minded ness of the Africa n regarding time; but I am sure, from many conversations, that you may place a limit of 500 years as the extreme one for the very oldest Negro or Bantu historical tradition. Indeed I doubt much whether any Bantu trad ition would run to that; I say historica l, because nhe religious tradition may be of intense XVll THE FAN I NVASION 401 antiquity, being handed down from generation to generation unaltered for immense periods of time. The child would be told, for example, that a dangerous spirit lived in the rapids of a river, or lurked in the forest, which it would be advisable for him to keep an eye on, for his own safety. But who would trouble to tell him that a chief of such and such a name once li\'ed th~re where the Engombie-Gombie trees have been shadowed down again by the great forest? The chief is dead. The village is dead, " pala\'er done set," so the historical tradi- tion fades out like smoke. Even the im'asion of another tribe, like the Fans,for example, does not affect the religious tradition much. For it is not on the whole a war invasion: they come clown in villagefuls among the older tribes, and hear the local spirit-gossip, and take it to their ample bosom, of belief, and pass the traditions on to their children. Meanwh ile, the tribe that told them these things has moved \'Vest, away from them, because they have got the best bush places cleared and co\'ered with their planta- tions, and they catch all the fish, and they get a ll the trade, and they eat respectable people occasionally, and steal from them continually, and they kick up such a noise, and have such perpetual rows among each other, and respectable villages belonging to the older tribe; that the older tribe has the opin ion forced upon it, that no decent people can live near those filthy, fearful Fans, and so mo\'e nearer in to L embarene or Libre- ville. In addition to this cause of a tribe leaving its old districts, there are others which move tribes completely off earthly dis- tricts of any kind altogether: among these are the smallpox, and the sleep disease. The former is most common in Congo Fran~ais, where it receives the graphically descriptive name of" the spotted death" among the nati\·es, the latter appears in its worst form in Kacongo and Angola, where whole villages are, at intervals, depopulated by it. The visitations of these maladies, indeed of all maladies in \Vest Africa, take the form of epidemics, and seem periodic. I ha\'e collected much material, but not sufficient yet to make deductions from, as to the duration of the periods between the outbreaks. The natives all along the Coast from Calabar to the South will tell you: " It D D 402 THE LOG OF THE LAFA YETTE CHAP. is when the crabs come up the ri ver," which means when the cray fi sh come down the rivers; but that is just their artiess, un - observant w'"y of putting things. This swarming of the cray fi sh occu rs about every fi ve years, and for days the ri ver-water is crowded with them, so that you can bale them out by basket- ful s. This the native does, accompanying his operations with songs and tom-toms, and he then eats any quantity of them ; another quantity he smokes and preserves, in what he pleases to regard as a dried state, for sauce making; and the greatest quantity of all he chucks in heaps to fester round hi s dwelling. There are plenty more causes of the extinction of tribes besides these-so many in fact, that one gets to wonder that there are any Coast tribes of 100 years old or so left. Mr. Ibea himself says that there are not now more than 2,000 of his own tribe left, and that those that are now repre- senting it a re far inferior, physically, to those he remembers as hav ing seen as old men) when he was a boy. These Benga were once an exceedingly powerful and proud tribe. Now they have little save their pride left. In old days they were very busy making war on the ir neighbours, elephant hunting, shipping themselves as crew to whaling vessels, and other· people as slaves to slaving vessels, and so on. Great hands at the slave trade were these Benga, and slave-owners are they still ; but gone is their glory, and in a few years more the Benga wi ll themselves have gone to join the shades of the tribes that were before them in this land, leaving behind them no sign, not even a flint arrow-head, to show that they ever existed ; for their wooden utensil s and thei r iron weapons will rot like rag in the hot moist earth; and then H finish." Mr. Ibea and I got quite low about this. He agreed it was partially the Benga's own fault ; they had of late years taken to bad habits, he said ; amongst these to infant marriage. This s truck me as strange, for as I have already mentioned, the a lso dying-out Igalwas have only recently adopted this custom. He says that forty years ago it was quite unknown among the Benga, and that in former days both men and women were frequently over fifteen and twenty before they married. Now the old men buy g irl chi ldren, both as wives for themseh·es and XVII EFFECTS OF CIVILISATION for their infant sons. Then !VIr. Ibea blamed the rum; although he owned they had plenty of rum in the old prosperous whaling and slaving days. Indeed he said he thought the main reason of their extinction was the indolence that had come over the tribe, now these incenti\·es to activity were gone; for inactivity in Africa is death. H e said, of course as a Christian minister, he knew it was for t he best that the old wariike, bloodthirsty Benga spi rit was broken, but-but well, I think he felt as I feel myself when I come across quantities of my fellow countrymen talking of the wickedness of war, and the neces- sity of check ing our g rowing population, and so on ; only I feel it more than NIr. Ibea, for I am not a Christian minister and am more of a savage than he is. Nothing strikes one so much, in study ing the degeneration of these native tribes, as the direct effect that civilisation and re- formation has in hastening it. The worst enemy to the existence of the African tribe, is the one who comes to it and says :-Xow yo u must civilise, and come to school, and leave offall those awfu l goings-on of you rs, and settle down quietly. The tribe does so; the African is teachable and tractable; and then the lad ies and some of the young men are happy and content with the excitement of European clothes and frequent Church services; but the older men and . some of the bolder young men soon get bored with these thin gs and the, to · them, irksome restraints, and they go in for too much rum, or mope themselves to death, or return to their native customs. The African treats his rel ig ion much as other men do: when he gets slightly educated, a little scientific one might say, he removes from his religion all the disagreeable parts. H e promptly el iminates its equivalent Hell, represented in Fetishism by immediate and not future retribution. Then goes his rigid Sabbath-keeping, and food-restriction equivalen t, and he has nothing left but the agreeable portions : dances, polygamy, and so on ; and it's a very bad thing for him. I only state these things so as to urge upon people a t home the importance of combin ing technical instruction in their mission teaching; which by instill ing into the A fri can mind ideas of discipline, and pro\·iding him with manual occupation, will saye him from these relapses which are now the reproach of D D 2 THE LOG OF THE LAFA YETTE CHAP. missionary effort, and the curse and degradation of the African. I d o not feel sure that one must accept ~Ir. Jhea's opinion, and class infant marriage among the causes of tribe extinction, because this custom is in ,"ogue among many tribes that are still swarming, and among these Fans it is in \"ogue as regards the women. This, I think, is the earliest stage of the custom" The island of Corisco is three miles in length, north and south, and a \"erages one and three-quarters in breadth. Its north -west point is in lat. 0 ·, 58' north and long. 9°, 2c! east. I ha\"e acquired a good deal of information from local tradi- tions, charts, and personal experience, the latter being of course largely o f the situation of rocks and banks when personally na\"igating; so I will set the general results of my studies down" Cori co Island is situated in the middle o f Corisco Bay and is mo t sea,,"ard of the islands in the bay" It is su rrounded by a hollow bank, irregular in outline, extending in some places two-and-a-half miles off shore; and in addition to this extensiye shoal are e\"eral detached rocky patches off the ~ "E. "shore of the island" Off the ~"E" point lie Co risco Banks, the outer patch with three-and-a-half fathoms of water three miles off shore. On the outer large patch you may get tweh"e feet of water, but I found bottom at two feet. On the inner and Jarger it a\"erages three feet; among both these patches there are boat channels; and :'Ilr. rhea's accounts of his experiences _among them during the many myages he has made to and from the mainland, with the -till" current that runs round Cape .5t. J ohn, are thrilling, but not such as would induce anyone -.to make Co risco a yachting centre" Layal Island, \l"hich I ha,"e mentioned abow, is about 200 yards long but makes the most of itself""ith rocks and trees, and stands high abo\"e the water. I t is one mile south of Corisco I sland. It has a line of bank, on ,,"hich the sea breaks, north and north-east. The " \Yest Coast Pilot "says there is only a canoe passage between it and Corisco Island" This is not the case, for '"OU can take a small schooner between them, though I do not'a d,"ise it because of the rock reef running out from _-\londo Point. The edge of the encircling bank of Coriseo Island goes round outside La,"al one and a half miles to the w€>"t, XVJI LAVAL AND BANA RANKS and t\l'O miles to the southward. About a mile S.E. of Laval there is a reef which, when I \I'as on Corisco, was a perpetual line of foam. L a\'al Ban k lies S. 'v\1. t S . three-and-a-half miles from Laval Island. It is rock and sand. There is good fi shing near it, but the sea breaks over the head of it furiously. It stretches two miles north and south and is one and a half broad, the Pilot says. I passed through it on my return voyage to Gaboon and think it is in many places two miles wide, but this being the rough season in these seas it showed itsel f off in full. Balla Island is a quarter of a mile long, and is lower than Laval. It is fi ve miles S. of the S.E. end of Corisco I sland, that is, Alondo. Its surrounding plinth of rock shows in places at low water and one large rock, which is never covered, shows about a mile out to sea, \'\1. by S. But Bai'ia Island is nothing to Bai'ia Bank, which supports Obanjo's-I beg his pardon, Captain Johnson's- statemen t that" half dem dar ' fern al Corisco Bay Islands lib under water." This bank is nine mil es long, in an east by north and west by south direction, averagi ng three and a hal f m iles in breadth. On it the depths are very shallow and variable. The eastern part of the bank is called the Crown Sand and a patch dries, for I was shell-hunting on it. A bout two miles S.E. by E. ~ E. of Bana, that is to say shorewards to the mainland, there is another patch of the Crown Sand which dries, wh ich is called the East Sand; on this I got some sponges and Gorgonia. After trying to g ive a conscientious account of Baila Bank, I notice m y friend t he" 'Nest Coast Pilot " collapses and pathetically beseeches you, if you will, or must, go into Cori sco Bay, to be very careful. I think these patches o f the Crown Sand that dry must be near to the end of the bank; for Captain Porter, who knows this bit of coast well, te ll s me there is a passage for vessels out of Cori sco Bay by Oranda Point, tO\l'ards Cape Esterias, pro\'ided they do not draw more than two fathoms and know the way; but this passage is not used now. Eleven miles east from the north-east end of Corisco Island, further into the bay, lie the two Eloby Islands. They are on the THE LOG OF THE LAFA VETTE CHAP. top of an extensive shoal, running in most directions for miles, but particularly eastwards and southwards. Mail steamers that come in to call at Messrs. H olt's factory on little Eloby, and off the mouth of the Muni River where Hatton and Cookson have a factory, come into Corisco Bay, from the north, round to the east of the Eloby islands, and leave by the same channel, which averages six fathoms ; and go south , if they want to, well outside to the west of all Corisco Bay's banks. I do not know why little Eloby Island should be the inhabited one. Big Eloby is a fine, likely-looking island. I was told by a Benga on Cape E sterias that it was once inhabited, but there was a war and the inhabitants were killed a nd carried off as slaves, and it has not siNce been re-colonised. The northern part of the bay I have had no personal ex- perience in nav igating, but, according to the" Pilot " it has its drawbacks, a nd according to people who have to work it, these drawbacks a re by no means down in all their beauty in the charts. It was in this bay that the B enguella struck on a something. I cannot be more definite because some of my friends who ought to know say it was a wreck-the old wreck o f the David MacLean; others, who ought to know, say it was· rocks ; anyhow she tore, then and there, a big wound in herself, and nothing but the fin e seamanship of Captain E vers- fi eld ever got her up in to Cameroons Ri ver and success fully beached her and repaired her there. During her convalescence she was the haven of refu ge for the unfortunate white folk of Cameroon while the mutin y of the D ahomeyan soldiers went on ashore in 1894. There is another wreck not down in the chart, just off Alondo, the south-east point of Corisco Island; it is that of the schooner Eljie, belonging to the A meri can Presby terian Mission. This. Corisco Bay, when yo u look at it on the map, seems an ideally fo rmed harbour, alid I once hea rd it strongly recom- mended as a suitable site for a coaling stat ion ; but a glance at its chart will show you it Is only a subtly rock-set trap for vessels, imperfect as the chart is. Its ",idtJ, is thirty-fi ve miles sou th by west and three-q ua rters west. This line touches the eastern end of Corisco Island, and eastwards of it the bay is fourteen miles deep. XVII SIERRA DEL CRISTAL Two rivers fall into Corisco Bay, the Muni and the Moondah. The latter runs up behind Libreville. There is a creek, the entrance to which is on the right-hand bank near the mouth of the illoondah as you enter; this runs behind Cape Esterias, in a south-east direction, and nearly communicates with the Gaboon estuary; so nearly that it is possible to utilise it as a short cut to Corisco Ray from Libreville, it being possible to drag a boat o,·er the inten·ening strip of land. The ]\I[ uni is a longer and more important river than the Moondah ; its outfall is north of it, opposite little Eloby Island, on the mainland shore. On a chart it looks like the usual :Urican ri,·er turned upside down , its upper course being split up into seyeral streams instead of its lower. Both these rivers, like many others in this region, rise in the range of the Sierra. del Cristal, an enormous belt of mountainous countly the eastern limitations of which are at present unexplored. A few great ri,·ers cut through this range from sources be- yond the Sierra, such as the Ogowe and the joint streams of the "Ibam and Sanaga which come into the Atlantic under the names of the O'Bengo and the Boungo. The ranges round the Ogo"",, are the best known parts of the Sierra del Cristal; for the Ogo"",, places at the traveller's disposal a path, such as I have partially described, through 500 miles of it ; and the Ogow,,"s chief affluent, the Nguni, cuts through it again from Samba south-eastwards; and the Okanda's course lies, as far as tha:t ri\-er has been ascended, in the very heart of it, going away north-east. I t is a range of old volcanic origin, running in series of ridges parallel to each other, and following the long line of the continent. Its general trend is north-west and south-east. It comes down almost to the sea beach behind Ratanga, and the beautiful little Loway River falls from a small cliff some twenty or thirty feet high belonging to, it on to ·the sea shore itself. It is this range which g i,·es the coast from Cameroon to Landana the marked superiority in beauty it possesses o,·er the rest of the ''''est Coast; excepting, of course, the splendours of Ambas Bay, which is a thing apart and out of all keeping with the Coast. These ,,-estern ridges of the Sierra make a beautiful purple blue background to the splendid THE LOG OF THE LA FA YETTE CHAP. band of forest that runs behind the bright yellow sands of the sea shore, which are again bordered to seaward by the white wall of surf. The mountains forming it are distinct in outline and fantastic in form, notably the one behind Batanga, which seen from seaward takes the exact form of a kneeling elephant. I ts height is 1707 feet and I am told there is another one of almost identical shape in the same parallel of latitude on the East African Coast. It was first ascended by Sir Richard Burton, since then Mr. Newberry of Batanga has been up it. He tell s me the view from the summit to the east is into a mountainous country as far as eye can see. Several of the other peaks of this range that have been measured, and are visible from the sea, are higher than the Elephant. The Mitre, inla nd from Cape St. J ohn , is 3940 feet; the highest of a stretch of hill s called the Seven Hills, but belonging to one ran ge, -is 2786 feet. Mount A louette is 3415 feet but none are so· striking in form as Mount Elephant. ) Beli ind Corisco Bay the range takes a trend inland, in a di rection nearly at right angles to the shore, going inland to the south-east by south ; but the details of its peaks are not known, this distri ct being little explored. The ran ge seems to t urn more eas tward still behind Cape E sterias, and runs towards, and un ites wi th , that part of the S ierra del Cristal that cuts the course of the Ogowe some 170 miles from the sea at Talagouga; onl y a few isola ted bubble-shaped hills, like Mount Sanga ta6, being in the Ogowe delta region. The pos ition of this range when I struck its western flank, coming across from the Ogowe to the R embwe, was some 140 to 150 miles inland , the ma in chain of this part ly ing to the eastward of where I was. The R embwe cuts through a portion of it just above Agonjo, but the Rembwe itself rises in the range. The 'Como, which it joins with at 'Como Point to form the Gaboon estuary, is said to rise inlands behind this range, and is formed like the Muni by several streams uniting. Obanjo told me, when I was at Ajongo, that the range was going from there in a north by east direction, but of the upper part of the 'Come little or nothi ng is personally knowil by ,;,hite men. T he inhabitants of the shores and hinterland of Corisco Bay are a wild set of savages of severa l tribes. The Benga were once XVIT THE COAST CLIMATE the ruling race among them, but they have diminished rapidly of late years. The country is very rich in rubber and ebony, which is bought by the Benga native traders, and M'pongwe, and sold to the white traders at Eloby and Cocoa Beach. Those traders who know the inland tribes describe them as savage and treacherous. The Fans are coming down through this part of the country to the beach all the way along from Batanga to the Gaboon estuary. I cannot hold out much hope that they will enlighten o r ameliorate the manners and customs of the older inhabitants as re- gards trade, but they can teach them a thing or two worth kno"'ing in the "'ay of activity and courtesy. That they will suffer the same extinction that the previous migrants to the Coast have suffered, there is no reason to doubt, for they wi ll be under similar conditions; and Mr. I bea and myself ag ree again, that there is something inimical to human life, black or "'hite, in the immediate Coast region of \,yest and South-\~-est Africa, as far down as Congo : and the interior tribes also join us in our opinion. Many times have I , and others, been told by interi or tribes that there is a certain air which comes from the sea that kills men-that is just their way of putting it. I call it Paludisme Malari"" : which is just my way of putting it, and of course I fancy that it comes from the rott ing, reeking swamp land and lagoons, and not from the sea., A nyhow, white men and black feel it, and suffer and die. CHAPTER XVIII FROM CORISCO TO GABOOK The log of the Lafayette on her return voyage from Corisco to Gaboon, giving some account of Cape Esterias and the inhabitants thereof; to which is added a full and particular account of a strange sailing manceuvre, first carried out by this voyager, and not included in an)' published treatise on the art of seamanship in the known world. August 8t1" 1895.-vVeather still ,"ery rough, the two mile sp it of rock running se