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Title: Travels in West Africa
Author: Mary H. Kingsley
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5891]
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[This file was first posted on September 17, 2002]
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA ***
This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
Travels in West Africa (Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons)
by Mary H. Kingsley.
To my brother, C. G. Kingsley this book is dedicated.
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
PREFACE TO THE ABRIDGED EDITION OF TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I. LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE AND THE GOLD COAST.
CHAPTER II. FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS.
CHAPTER III. VOYAGE DOWN COAST.
CHAPTER IV. THE OGOWE.
CHAPTER V. THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE.
CHAPTER VI. LEMBARENE.
CHAPTER VII. ON THE WAY FROM KANGWE TO LAKE NCOVI.
CHAPTER VIII. FROM NCOVI TO ESOON.
CHAPTER IX. FROM ESOON TO AGONJO.
CHAPTER X. BUSH TRADE AND FAN CUSTOMS.
CHAPTER XI. DOWN THE REMBWE.
CHAPTER XII. FETISH.
CHAPTER XIII. FETISH--(Continued).
CHAPTER XIV. FETISH--(Continued).
CHAPTER XV. FETISH--(Continued).
CHAPTER XVI. FETISH--(Concluded).
CHAPTER XVII. ASCENT OF THE GREAT PEAK OF CAMEROONS.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE GREAT PEAK OF CAMEROONS--(Continued).
CHAPTER XIX. THE GREAT PEAK OF CAMEROONS--(Continued).
CHAPTER XX. THE GREAT PEAK OF CAMEROONS--(Concluded).
CHAPTER XXI. TRADE AND LABOUR IN WEST AFRICA.
CHAPTER XXII. DISEASE IN WEST AFRICA.
APPENDIX. THE INVENTION OF THE CLOTH LOOM.
PREFACE
TO THE READER.--What this book wants is not a simple Preface but an
apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that.
Recognising this fully, and feeling quite incompetent to write such
a masterpiece, 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 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 really 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
Mr. George Macmillan for his patience and kindness with me,--a mere
jungle of information on West Africa. Whether you my reader will
share my gratitude is, I fear, doubtful, for if it had not been for
him I should never have attempted to write a book at all, and in
order to excuse his having induced me to try I beg to state that I
have written only on things that I know from personal experience and
very careful observation. I have never accepted an explanation of a
native custom from one person alone, nor have I set down 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 in Lower Guinea and some description of the various
types of country there. In reading this section you must make
allowances for my love of this sort of country, with its great
forests and rivers and its animistic-minded inhabitants, and for my
ability to be more comfortable there than in England. Your superior
culture-instincts may militate against your enjoying West Africa,
but if you go there you will find things as I have said.
January, 1897.
PREFACE TO THE ABRIDGED EDITION OF TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA.
When on my return to England from my second sojourn in West Africa,
I discovered, to my alarm, that I was, by a freak of fate, the sea-
serpent of the season, I published, in order to escape from this
reputation, a very condensed, much abridged version of my
experiences in Lower Guinea; and I thought that I need never explain
about myself or Lower Guinea again. This was one of my errors. I
have been explaining ever since; and, though not reconciled to so
doing, I am more or less resigned to it, because it gives me
pleasure to see that English people can take an interest in that
land they have neglected. Nevertheless, it was a shock to me when
the publishers said more explanation was required. I am thankful to
say the explanation they required was merely on what plan the
abridgment of my first account had been made. I can manage that
explanation easily. It has been done by removing from it certain
sections whole, and leaving the rest very much as it first stood.
Of course it would have been better if I had totally reformed and
rewritten the book in pellucid English; but that is beyond me, and I
feel at any rate this book must be better than it was, for there is
less of it; and I dimly hope critics will now see that there is a
saving grace in disconnectedness, for owing to that disconnectedness
whole chapters have come out without leaving holes.
As for the part that is left in, I have already apologised for its
form, and I cannot help it, for Lower Guinea is like what I have
said it is. No one who knows it has sent home contradictions of my
description of it, or its natives, or their manners or customs, and
they have had by now ample time and opportunity. The only
complaints I have had regarding my account from my fellow West
Coasters have been that I might have said more. I trust my
forbearance will send a thrill of gratitude through readers of the
736-page edition.
There is, however, one section that I reprint, regarding which I
must say a few words. It is that on the trade and labour problem in
West Africa, particularly the opinion therein expressed regarding
the liquor traffic. This part has brought down on me much criticism
from the Missionary Societies and their friends; and I beg
gratefully to acknowledge the honourable fairness with which the
controversy has been carried on by the great Wesleyan Methodist
Mission to the Gold Coast and the Baptist Mission to the Congo. It
has not ended in our agreement on this point, but it has raised my
esteem of Missionary Societies considerably; and anyone interested
in this matter I beg to refer to the Baptist Magazine for October,
1897. Therein will be found my answer, and the comments on it by a
competent missionary authority; for the rest of this matter I beg
all readers of this book to bear in mind that I confine myself to
speaking only of the bit of Africa I know--West Africa. During this
past summer I attended a meeting at which Sir George Taubman Goldie
spoke, and was much struck with the truth of what he said on the
difference of different African regions. He divided Africa into
three zones: firstly, that region where white races could colonise
in the true sense of the word, and form a great native-born white
population, namely, the region of the Cape; secondly, a region where
the white race could colonise, but to a less extent--an extent
analogous to that in India--namely, the highlands of Central East
Africa and parts of Northern Africa; thirdly, a region where the
white races cannot colonise in a true sense of the word, namely, the
West African region, and in those regions he pointed out one of the
main elements of prosperity and advance is the native African
population. I am quoting his words from memory, possibly
imperfectly; but there is very little reliable printed matter to go
on when dealing with Sir George Taubman Goldie, which is regrettable
because he himself is an experienced and reliable authority. I am
however quite convinced that these aforesaid distinct regions are
regions that the practical politician dealing with Africa must
recognise, and keep constantly in mind when attempting to solve the
many difficulties that that great continent presents, and sincerely
hope every reader of this work will remember that I am speaking of
that last zone, the zone wherein white races cannot colonise in a
true sense of the word, but which is nevertheless a vitally
important region to a great manufacturing country like England, for
therein are vast undeveloped markets wherein she can sell her
manufactured goods and purchase raw material for her manufactures at
a reasonable rate.
Having a rooted, natural, feminine hatred for politics I have no
inclination to become diffuse on them, as I have on the errors of
other people's cooking or ideas on decoration. I know I am held to
be too partial to France in West Africa; too fond of pointing out
her brilliant achievements there, too fond of saying the native is
as happy, and possibly happier, under her rule than under ours; and
also that I am given to a great admiration for Germans; but this is
just like any common-sense Englishwoman. Of course I am devoted to
my own John; but still Monsieur is brave, bright, and fascinating;
Mein Herr is possessed of courage and commercial ability in the
highest degree, and, besides, he takes such a lot of trouble to know
the real truth about things, and tells them to you so calmly and
carefully--and our own John--well, of course, he is everything
that's good and great, but he makes a shocking fool of himself at
times, particularly in West Africa.
I should enjoy holding what one of my justly irritated expurgators
used to call one of my little thanksgiving services here, but I will
not; for, after all, it would be impossible for me to satisfactorily
thank those people who, since my publication of this book, have
given me help and information on the subject of West Africa. Chief
amongst them have been Mr. A. L. Jones, Sir. R. B. N. Walker, Mr.
Irvine, and Mr. John Holt. I have not added to this book any
information I have received since I wrote it, as it does not seem to
me fair to do so. My only regret regarding it is that I have not
dwelt sufficiently on the charm of West Africa; it is so difficult
to explain such things; but I am sure there are amongst my readers
people who know by experience the charm some countries exercise over
men--countries very different from each other and from West Africa.
The charm of West Africa is a painful one: it gives you pleasure
when you are out there, but when you are back here it gives you pain
by calling you. It sends up before your eyes a vision of a wall of
dancing white, rainbow-gemmed surf playing on a shore of yellow sand
before an audience of stately coco palms; or of a great mangrove-
watered bronze river; or of a vast aisle in some forest cathedral:
and you hear, nearer to you than the voices of the people round,
nearer than the roar of the city traffic, the sound of the surf that
is breaking on the shore down there, and the sound of the wind
talking on the hard palm leaves and the thump of the natives' tom-
toms; or the cry of the parrots passing over the mangrove swamps in
the evening time; or the sweet, long, mellow whistle of the plantain
warblers calling up the dawn; and everything that is round you grows
poor and thin in the face of the vision, and you want to go back to
the Coast that is calling you, saying, as the African says to the
departing soul of his dying friend, "Come back, come back, this is
your home."
M. H. KINGSLEY.
October, 1897.
[NOTE.--The following chapters of the first edition are not included
in this edition: --Chap. ii., The Gold Coast; Chap. iv., Lagos Bar;
Chap. v., Voyage down Coast; Chap. vi., Libreville and Glass; Chap.
viii., Talagouga; Chap. xvi., Congo Francais; Chap. xvii., The Log
of the Lafayette; Chap. xviii., From Corisco to Gaboon; Chap.
xxviii., The Islands in the Bay of Amboises; Appendix ii., Disease
in West Africa; Appendix iii., Dr. A. Gunther on Reptiles and
Fishes; Appendix iv., Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, and Hemiptera.]
INTRODUCTION.
Relateth the various causes which impelled the author to embark upon
the voyage.
It was 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. Where 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 West Africa
must be my destination, for the Malayan region was too far off and
too expensive. Then I got Wallace's Geographical Distribution and
after reading that master's article on the Ethiopian region I
hardened my heart and closed with West 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, and 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 West Africa was soon removed. And although
the vast cavity in my mind that it occupied 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 West Africa.
The disagreeables of West Africa.
The diseases of West Africa.
The things you must take to West Africa.
The things you find most handy in West Africa.
The worst possible things you can do in West Africa.
I inquired of all my friends as a beginning what they knew of West
Africa. The majority knew nothing. A percentage said, "Oh, you
can't possibly go there; that's where Sierra Leone is, the white
mans grave, you know." If these were pressed further, one
occasionally found that they had had relations who had gone out
there after having been "sad trials," but, on consideration of their
having left not only West Africa, but this world, were now forgiven
and forgotten.
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 these colours may arise from lack of artistic
gift in the cartographer. There is no mistaking what he means by
black, however, and black you'll find they colour West Africa from
above Sierra Leone to below the Congo. "I wouldn't go there if I
were you," said my medical 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 list of commissions from here to New York, any one
of which--but I only found that out afterwards.
All my informants referred me to the missionaries. "There were,"
they said, in an airy way, "lots of them down there, and had been
for many 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 foolishness into their heads about obtaining an
inadequate supply of souls for their money. I also found fearful
confirmation 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 either to good or bad respectively
by the missionary and the trader. There were also the Government
representatives, whose chief business it was to strengthen and
consolidate the missionary's work, a function they carried on but
indifferently well. But as for those traders! well, I put them down
under the dangers of West Africa at once. Subsequently 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 Angel
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. When it occurs terrestrially the trader becomes a Liverpool
mate. But of course no one need believe it either way--it is not a
missionary's story.
Naturally, while my higher intelligence was taken up with 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 West Africa, and he said,
"When you have made up your mind to go to West Africa the very best
thing you can do is to get it unmade again and go to Scotland
instead; but if your intelligence is not strong enough to do so,
abstain from exposing yourself to the direct rays of the sun, take 4
grains of quinine every day for a fortnight before you reach the
Rivers, and get some introductions to the Wesleyans; they are the
only people on the Coast who have got a hearse with feathers."
My attention was next turned to getting ready things to take with
me. Having opened upon myself the sluice gates of advice, I rapidly
became distracted. My friends and their friends 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. This not being
the case, the only thing to do was to gratefully listen and let
things drift.
Not only do the things you have got to take, but the things you have
got to take them in, present a fine series of problems to the young
traveller. Crowds of witnesses testified to the forms of baggage
holders they had found invaluable, and these, it is unnecessary to
say, were all different in form and material.
With all this embarras de choix I was too distracted to buy anything
new in the way of baggage except a long waterproof sack neatly
closed at the top with a bar and handle. Into this I put blankets,
boots, books, in fact anything 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 served me well throughout my voyage.
It was the beginning of August '93 when I first left England for
"the Coast." Preparations of quinine with postage partially paid
arrived up to the last moment, and a friend hastily sent two
newspaper clippings, one entitled "A Week 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 West Africa, and
on which I was to spend seven to The Graphic contributor's one; the
other from The Daily Telegraph, 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, "Why has not this man been buried?" "It is fetish
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 was 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 World's Women's Temperance Association, and
collecting shocking details for subsequent magic-lantern lectures on
the liquor traffic; so fearful misunderstandings arose, but we
gradually educated each other, and I had the best of the affair; for
all I had got to teach them was that I was only a beetle and fetish
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
abominations 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 had never previously
been even in a tame bit of tropics, and whose life for many years
had been an entirely domestic one in a University town.
One by one I took my old ideas derived from books and thoughts based
on imperfect knowledge and weighed them against the real life around
me, and found them either worthless or wanting. The greatest
recantation I had to make I made humbly before I had been three
months on the Coast in 1893. It was of my idea of the traders.
What I had expected to find them was a very different thing to what
I did find them; and of their kindness to me I can never
sufficiently speak, for on that voyage I was 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 West
Coast in 1893 was that I could trust them. Had I not learnt this
very thoroughly I could never have gone out again and carried out
the voyage I give you a sketch of in this book.
Thanks to "the Agent," I have visited places I could never otherwise
have seen; and to the respect and affection in which he is held by
the native, I owe it that I have done so in safety. When I have
arrived off his factory in a steamer or canoe unexpected,
unintroduced, or turned up equally unheralded out of the bush in a
dilapidated state, he has always received me with that gracious
hospitality which must have given him, under Coast conditions, very
real trouble and inconvenience--things he could have so readily
found logical excuses against entailing upon himself for the sake of
an individual whom he had never seen before--whom he most likely
would never see again--and whom it was no earthly profit to him to
see then. He has bestowed himself--Allah only knows where--on his
small trading vessels so that I might have his one cabin. He has
fished me out of sea and fresh water with boat-hooks; he has
continually given me good advice, which if I had only followed would
have 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,
fishes and fetish, 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 Latin. All
I know that is true regarding West African facts, I owe to the
traders; the errors are my own.
To Dr. Gunther, of the British Museum, I am deeply grateful 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 him.
Yet his courtesy and attention 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 with the knowledge that if these things
interested a man like him, it was a more than sufficient reason for
me to go on collecting them. To Mr. W. H. F. Kirby I am much
indebted for his working 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 gratitude
still outstanding to the West Coast. Chiefly 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 Francais as I have seen, and his
efforts to take care of me were most ably seconded by Mr. Fildes.
The French officials in "Congo Francais" 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 fine
colony of France that they need be ashamed of any one seeing; but I
find it is customary for travellers to say the French officials
throw obstacles in the way of any one visiting their possessions, so
I merely beg to state this was decidedly not my experience; although
my deplorable ignorance of French prevented me from explaining my
humble intentions to them.
The Rev. Dr. Nassau and Mr. R. E. Dennett have enabled me, by
placing at my disposal the rich funds of their knowledge of native
life and idea, to amplify any deductions from my own observation.
Mr. Dennett's work I have not dealt with in this work because it
refers to tribes I was not amongst on this journey, but to a tribe I
made the acquaintance with in my '93 voyage--the Fjort. Dr.
Nassau's observations I have referred to. Herr von Lucke, Vice-
governor of Cameroon, I am indebted to for not only allowing 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 all these gentlemen, that it is a wonder
to me, when I think of it, that their efforts did not project me
right across the continent and out at Zanzibar. That this brilliant
affair did not come off is owing to my own lack of enterprise; for I
did not want to go across the continent, and I do not hanker after
Zanzibar, but only to go puddling about obscure districts in West
Africa after raw fetish and fresh-water fishes.
I owe my ability to have profited by the kindness of these gentlemen
on land, to a gentleman of the sea--Captain Murray. He was captain
of the vessel I went out on in 1893, and he saw then that my mind
was full of errors that must be eradicated if I was going to deal
with the Coast successfully; and so he eradicated those errors and
replaced them with sound knowledge from his own stores collected
during an acquaintance with the West Coast of over thirty years.
The education he has given me has been of the greatest value to me,
and I sincerely hope to make many more voyages under him, for I well
know he has still much to 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 Anna de Sousa
Coutinho e Chichorro and her sister Donna Maria 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 and 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 a
continual pleasure to see in Cameroons, and discourse with once
again on things that seemed so far off then--art, science, and
literature; and Mrs. H. Duggan, of Cameroons too, who used, whenever
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 conversation 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. Many of 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 my old friend Captain Boler,
of Bonny, from whom I first learnt a certain power of comprehending
the African and his form of thought.
I have great reason to be grateful to the Africans themselves--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 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 believe
in. Now I am ambitious to make a picture, if I make one at all,
that people who do know the original can believe in--even if they
criticise its points--and so I give you details a more showy artist
would omit.
CHAPTER I. LIVERPOOL TO SIERRA LEONE AND THE GOLD COAST.
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.
Wherein also some description of Cape Coast and Accra is given, to
which are added divers observations on supplies to be obtained
there.
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 merci.
I succumbed to the charm of the Coast as soon as I left Sierra Leone
on my first voyage out, and I saw more than enough during 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 displayed a genuine surprise, and formed an even higher
opinion of my folly than it had formed on our first acquaintance,
which is saying a good deal.
During this voyage in 1893, I had been to Old Calabar, and its
Governor, Sir Claude MacDonald, had heard me expatiating on the
absorbing interest of the Antarctic drift, and the importance of the
collection of fresh-water fishes and so on. So when Lady MacDonald
heroically decided to go out to him in Calabar, they most kindly
asked me if I would join her, and make my time fit hers for starting
on my second journey. This I most willingly did. But I fear that
very sweet and gracious lady suffered a great deal of apprehension
at the prospect of spending a month on board ship with a person so
devoted to science as to go down the West 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
interesting, 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 while 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 this 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 kindly--whereupon, in a burst of gratitude to
her for understanding me, I appointed myself her honorary aide-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 fever 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 Liverpool in the
Batanga, commanded by my old friend Captain Murray, under whose care
I had made my first voyage. 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 Pico is a terrestrial
affair, they look in vain somewhere about the level of their own
eyes, which are striving 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 newcomer the glittering white triangle
somewhere near the zenith. On some days the Peak stands out clear
from ocean to summit, looking every 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 weather, or a gale of wind; but whenever and however
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 Teneriffe, Lancarote 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 against a serpent-green
sky, separated from the brilliant blue ocean by a girdle of pink and
gold cumulus, while Grand Canary and Lancarote looked as if they
were formed from fantastic-shaped sunset cloud-banks that by some
spell had been solidified. The general colour of the mountains of
Grand Canary, which rise peak after peak until they culminate in the
Pico de las Nieves, some 6,000 feet high, is a yellowish red, and
the air which lies among their rocky crevices and swathes their
softer sides is a lovely lustrous blue.
Just before the sudden dark came down, and when the sun was taking a
curve out of the horizon of sea, all the clouds gathered round the
three islands, leaving the sky a pure amethyst pink, and as a good-
night to them the sun outlined them with rims of shining gold, and
made the snow-clad Peak of Teneriffe blaze with star-white light.
In a few minutes came the dusk, and as we neared Grand Canary, out
of its cloud-bank gleamed the red flash of the lighthouse on the
Isleta, and in a few more minutes, along the sea level, sparkled the
five miles of irregularly distributed lights of Puerto de la Luz and
the city of Las Palmas.
We reached Sierra Leone at 9 A.M. on the 7th of January, and as the
place is hardly so much in touch with the general public as the
Canaries are {14} I may perhaps venture to go more into details
regarding it. The harbour is formed by the long low strip of land
to the north called the Bullam shore, and to the south by the
peninsula terminating in Cape Sierra Leone, a sandy promontory at
the end of which is situated a lighthouse of irregular habits. Low
hills covered with tropical forest growth rise from the sandy shores
of the Cape, and along its face are three creeks or bays, deep
inlets showing through their narrow entrances smooth beaches of
yellow sand, fenced inland by the forest of cotton-woods and palms,
with here and there an elephantine 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 peak known as Sugar Loaf, and when
seen from the sea they are very lovely, for their form is noble, and
a wealth of tropical vegetation covers them, which, unbroken in its
continuity, but endless in its variety, 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 have 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 Irish 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 its capital 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 Africa," {15} as it is called, looks 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 dilapidation--are of
painted wood, with corrugated iron roofs. Here and there, though,
you will see a thatched house, its thatch covered with creeping
plants, and inhabited by colonies of creeping insects.
Some of the stores and churches are, it is true, built of stone, but
this does not look like stone at a distance, being red in colour--
unhewn blocks of the red stone of the locality. In the crannies of
these buildings trailing plants covered with pretty mauve or yellow
flowers take root, and everywhere, along the tops of the walls, and
in the cracks of the houses, are ferns and flowering plants. They
must get a good deal of their nourishment from the rich, thick air,
which seems composed of 85 per cent. of warm water, and the
remainder of the odours of Frangipani, orange flowers, magnolias,
oleanders, and roses, combined with others that demonstrate that the
inhabitants do not regard sanitary matters with the smallest degree
of interest.
There is one central street, and the others are neatly planned out
at right angles to it. None of them are in any way paved or
metalled. They are covered in much prettier fashion, and in a way
more suitable for naked feet, by green Bahama grass, save and except
those which are so nearly perpendicular that they have got every bit
of earth and grass cleared off them down to the red bed-rock, by the
heavy rain of the wet season.
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. While
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
sedentary section, the members of which have dismounted their loads
and squatted themselves down beside them, right 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 Western
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.
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 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 waiting 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 spite 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 newcomer, notwithstanding
the fact that the noise, the smell, 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 partially-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 stick and ribs
removed, or a shirt. This last-mentioned treasure, which usually
becomes the property of the ordinary man from a female relative or
admirer taking in white men's washing, is always worn flowing free,
and has such a charm in itself that the happy possessor 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.
The ladies are divided into three classes; the young girl you
address as "tee-tee"; the young person as "seester"; the more mature
charmer as "mammy"; but I do not advise 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 unconscious of her dignity as a
married lady--a matter she would soon put you right on--or that you
were flirting, which of course was totally foreign to your
intention, and would make you uncomfortable. My advice is that you
rigidly stick to missus or mammy. I have seen this done most
successfully.
The ladies are almost as varied in their costume as the gentlemen,
but always neater and cleaner; and mighty picturesque they are too,
and occasionally very pretty. A market-woman with her jolly brown
face and laughing brown eyes--eyes all the softer for a touch of
antimony--her ample form clothed in a lively print overall, made
with a yoke at the shoulders, and a full long flounce which is
gathered on to the yoke under the arms and falls fully to the feet;
with her head done up in a yellow or red handkerchief, and her snowy
white teeth gleaming through her vast smiles, is a mighty pleasant
thing to see, and to talk to. But, Allah! the circumference of
them!
The stone-built, white-washed market buildings of Free Town have a
creditably clean and tidy appearance considering the climate, and
the quantity and variety of things exposed for sale--things one
wants the pen of a Rabelais to catalogue. Here are all manner of
fruits, some which are familiar to you in England; others that soon
become so to you 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.
One of the chief features of Free Town are the jack crows. Some
writers say they are peculiar to Sierra Leone, others that they are
not, but both unite in calling them Picathartes gymnocephalus. To
the white people who live in daily contact with them they are turkey
buzzards; to the natives, Yubu. Anyhow they are 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 along its summit, with their
wings arranged at all manner of different angles in an "all gone"
way. One bird perhaps will have one straight out in front, and the
other casually disposed at right-angles, another both straight out
in front, 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 impression of having been extremely
drunk the previous evening, and of having subsequently fallen into
some sticky abomination--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 live through the
afternoon. They also told me that when you got close to them, they
had a "'trong, 'trong 'niff; 'niff 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. All 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 the nothing that the world
was made of," as Frau Buchholtz says, and own in addition a fibrous
texture, and a certain 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 shortly dies. Some
say it is because the natives who get their living by hammock-
carrying poison them, others say the tsetse fly finishes 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.
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, heavily-forested hills, which rise almost from
the seashore, and the fine mass of its old castle does not display
its dilapidation at a distance. Moreover, the three stone forts of
Victoria, William, and Macarthy, situated on separate hills
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 visual delusion produced by
painted wood as the seeming substantialness 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 centuries, but it requires a most unmodern power
of credence to realise this of any other settlement on the whole
western seaboard until you have the pleasure of seeing the beautiful
city of San Paul de Loanda, 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 former attribute was due to the climate, the latter to
my kind friends, Mr. Batty, and Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Kemp. 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 cut 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 unmitigated hill, on whose summit
stands Fort William, a pepper-pot-like structure now used as a
lighthouse. The view from the top was exceedingly lovely and
extensive. Beneath, and between us and the sea, lay the town in the
blazing sun. In among its solid stone buildings 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 work cargo. Round us on
all 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 thither, skirting 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 into a sort of stone-walled dry moat, out
of which opened clean, cool, cellar-like chambers tunnelled into the
earth. These, I was informed, had also been constructed to keep
slaves in when they were the staple export of the Gold Coast. They
were so refreshingly 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. It
is a building in the terrible Africo-Gothic style, 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 my edification, not one of my friends
would have spent the day toiling about the town they know only too
well. The Wesleyan Mission on the Gold Coast, of which Mr. Dennis
Kemp was at that time chairman, is the largest and most influential
Protestant mission on the West Coast of Africa, and it is now, I am
glad 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 instruction 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 African
being so strangely deficient in mechanical culture; infinitely more
so, indeed, in this than in any other particular.
After leaving Cape Coast our next port was Accra which is one of the
five West Coast towns that look well 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, Sierra Leone.
What there is of beauty in Accra is oriental in type. Seen from the
sea, Fort St. James on the left and Christiansborg Castle on the
right, both almost on shore level, 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 would be but a
poor place and a flimsy, for the rest of it is a mass of rubbishy
mud and palm-leaf huts, and corrugated iron dwellings for the
Europeans.
Corrugated iron is my abomination. I quite understand it has
points, and I do not attack from an aesthetic 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 distance in the hard bright
sunshine looks like an encampment of snow-white tents among the coco
palms, and pretty enough withal. I am also aware that the
corrugated-iron roof is an advantage in enabling you to collect and
store rain-water, which is the safest kind of water you can get on
the Coast, always supposing you have not painted the aforesaid roof
with red oxide an hour or two before so collecting, as a friend of
mine did once. But the heat inside those iron houses is far greater
than inside mud-walled, brick, or wooden ones, and the alternations
of temperature more sudden: mornings and evenings they are cold and
clammy; draughty they are always, thereby giving you chill which
means fever, and fever in West Africa means more than it does in
most places.
Going on shore at Accra with Lady MacDonald gave me opportunities
and advantages I should not otherwise have enjoyed, such as the
hospitality of the Governor, luxurious transport from the landing
place to Christiansborg Castle, a thorough inspection of the
cathedral in course of erection, and the strange and highly
interesting function of going to a tea-party at a police station to
meet a king,--a real reigning king,--who kindly attended with his
suite and displayed an intelligent interest in photographs. Tackie
(that is His Majesty's name) is an old, spare man, with a subdued
manner. His sovereign rights are acknowledged by the Government so
far as to hold him more or less responsible for any iniquity
committed by his people; and as the Government do not allow him to
execute or flagellate the said people, earthly pomp is rather a
hollow thing to Tackie.
On landing I was taken in charge by an Assistant Inspector of
Police, and after a scrimmage for my chief's baggage and my own,
which reminded me of a long ago landing on the distant island of
Guernsey, the inspector and I got into a 'rickshaw, locally called a
go-cart. It was pulled in front by two government negroes and
pushed behind by another pair, all neatly attired in white jackets
and knee breeches, and crimson cummerbunds yards long, bound round
their middles. Now it is an ingrained characteristic of the
uneducated negro, that he cannot keep on a neat and complete garment
of any kind. It does not matter what that garment may be; so long
as it is whole, off it comes. But as soon as that garment becomes a
series of holes, held together by filaments of rag, he keeps it upon
him in a manner that is marvellous, and you need have no further
anxiety on its behalf. Therefore it was but natural that the
governmental cummerbunds, being new, should come off their wearers
several times in the course of our two mile trip, and as they wound
riskily round the legs of their running wearers, we had to make
halts while one end of the cummerbund was affixed to a tree-trunk
and the other end to the man, who rapidly wound himself up in it
again with a skill that spoke of constant practice.
The road to Christiansborg from Accra, which runs parallel to the
sea and is broad and well-kept, is in places pleasantly shaded with
pepper trees, eucalyptus, and palms. The first part of it, which
forms the main street of Accra, is remarkable. The untidy, poverty-
stricken native houses or huts are no credit to their owners, and a
constant source of anxiety to a conscientious sanitary inspector.
Almost every one of them is a shop, but this does not give rise to
the animated commercial life one might imagine, owing, I presume, to
the fact that every native inhabitant of Accra who has any money to
get rid of is able recklessly to spend it in his own emporium. For
these shops are of the store nature, each after his kind, and seem
homogeneously stocked with tin pans, loud-patterned basins, iron
pots, a few rolls of cloth and bottles of American rum. After
passing these there are the Haussa lines, a few European houses, and
the cathedral; and when nearly into Christiansborg, a cemetery on
either side of the road. That to the right is the old cemetery, now
closed, and when I was there, in a disgracefully neglected state: a
mere jungle of grass infested with snakes. Opposite to it is the
cemetery now in use, and I remember well my first visit to it under
the guidance of a gloomy Government official, who said he always
walked there every afternoon, "so as to get used to the place before
staying permanently in it,"--a rank waste of time and energy, by the
way, as subsequent events proved, for he is now safe off the Gold
Coast for good and all.
He took me across the well-kept grass to two newly dug graves, each
covered with wooden hoods in a most business-like way. Evidently
those hoods were regular parts of the cemetery's outfit. He said
nothing, but waved his hand with a "take-your-choice,-they-are-both-
quite-ready" style. "Why?" I queried laconically. "Oh! we always
keep two graves ready dug for Europeans. We have to bury very
quickly here, you know," he answered. I turned at bay. I had had
already a very heavy dose of details of this sort that afternoon and
was disinclined to believe another thing. So I said, "It's
exceedingly wrong to do a thing like that, you only frighten people
to death. You can't want new-dug graves daily. There are not
enough white men in the whole place to keep the institution up."
"We do," he replied, "at any rate at this season. Why, the other
day we had two white men to bury before twelve o'clock, and at four,
another dropped in on a steamer."
"At 4.30," said a companion, an exceedingly accurate member of the
staff. "How you fellows DO exaggerate!" Subsequent knowledge of
the Gold Coast has convinced me fully that the extra funeral being
placed half-an-hour sooner than it occurred is the usual percentage
of exaggeration you will be able to find in stories relating to the
local mortality. And at Accra, after I left it, and all along the
Gold Coast, came one of those dreadful epidemic outbursts sweeping
away more than half the white population in a few weeks.
But to return to our state journey along the Christiansborg road.
We soon reached the castle, an exceedingly roomy and solid edifice
built by the Danes, and far better fitted for the climate than our
modern dwellings, in spite of our supposed advance in tropical
hygiene. We entered by the sentry-guarded great gate into the
courtyard; on the right hand were the rest of the guard; most of
them asleep on their mats, but a few busy saying Dhikr, etc.,
towards Mecca, like the good Mohammedans these Haussas are, others
winding themselves into their cummerbunds. On the left hand was Sir
Brandford Griffiths' hobby--a choice and select little garden, of
lovely eucharis lilies mostly in tubs, and rare and beautiful
flowers brought by him from his Barbadian home; while shading it and
the courtyard was a fine specimen of that superb thing of beauty--a
flamboyant tree--glorious with its delicate-green acacia-like leaves
and vermilion and yellow flowers, and astonishing with its vast
beans. A flight of stone stairs leads from the courtyard to the
upper part of the castle where the living rooms are, over the
extensive series of cool tunnel-like slave barracoons, now used as
store chambers. The upper rooms are high and large, and full of a
soft pleasant light and the thunder of the everlasting surf breaking
on the rocky spit on which the castle is built.
From the day the castle was built, now more than a hundred years
ago, the surf spray has been swept by the on-shore evening breeze
into every chink and cranny of the whole building, and hence the
place is mouldy--mouldy to an extent I, with all my experience in
that paradise for mould, West Africa, have never elsewhere seen.
The matting on the floors took an impression of your foot as a light
snowfall would. Beneath articles of furniture the cryptogams
attained a size more in keeping with the coal period than with the
nineteenth century.
The Gold Coast is one of the few places in West Africa that I have
never felt it my solemn duty to go and fish in. I really cannot say
why. Seen from the sea it is a pleasant looking land. The long
lines of yellow, sandy beach backed by an almost continuous line of
blue hills, which in some places come close to the beach, in other
places show in the dim distance. It is hard to think that it is so
unhealthy as it is, from just seeing it as you pass by. It has high
land and has not those great masses of mangrove-swamp one usually,
at first, associates with a bad fever district, but which prove on
acquaintance to be at any rate no worse than this well-elevated
open-forested Gold Coast land. There are many things to be had here
and in Lagos which tend to make life more tolerable, that you cannot
have elsewhere until you are south of the Congo. Horses, for
example, do fairly well at Accra, though some twelve miles or so
behind the town there is a belt of tsetse fly, specimens of which I
have procured and had identified at the British Museum, and it is
certain death to a horse, I am told, to take it to Aburi.
The food-supply, although bad and dear, is superior to that you get
down south. Goats and sheep are fairly plentiful. In addition to
fresh meat and tinned you are able to get a quantity of good sea
fish, for the great West African Bank, which fringes the coast in
the Bight of Benin, abounds in fish, although the native cook very
rarely knows how to cook them. Then, too, you can get more fruit
and vegetables on the Gold Coast than at most places lower down:
the plantain, {28} not least among them and very good when allowed
to become ripe, and then cut into longitudinal strips, and properly
fried; the banana, which surpasses it when served in the same
manner, or beaten up and mixed with rice, butter, and eggs, and
baked. Eggs, by the way, according to the great mass of native
testimony, are laid in this country in a state that makes them more
fit for electioneering than culinary purposes, and I shall never
forget one tribe I was once among, who, whenever I sat down on one
of their benches, used to smash eggs round me for ju-ju. They meant
well. But I will nobly resist the temptation to tell egg stories
and industriously catalogue the sour-sop, guava, grenadilla,
aubergine or garden-egg, yam, and sweet potato.
The sweet potato should be boiled, and then buttered and browned in
an oven, or fried. When cooked in either way I am devoted to them,
but in the way I most frequently come across them I abominate them,
for they jeopardise my existence both in this world and the next.
It is this way: you are coming home from a long and dangerous
beetle-hunt in the forest; you have battled with mighty beetles the
size of pie dishes, they have flown at your head, got into your hair
and then nipped you smartly. You have been also considerably stung
and bitten by flies, ants, etc., and are most likely sopping wet
with rain, or with the wading of streams, and you are tired and your
feet go low along the ground, and it is getting, or has got, dark
with that ever-deluding tropical rapidity, and then you for your
sins get into a piece of ground which last year was a native's farm,
and, placing one foot under the tough vine of a surviving sweet
potato, concealed by rank herbage, you plant your other foot on
another portion of the same vine. Your head you then deposit
promptly in some prickly ground crop, or against a tree stump, and
then, if there is human blood in you, you say d--n!
Then there are also alligator-pears, limes, and oranges. There is
something about those oranges I should like to have explained. They
are usually green and sweetish in taste, nor have they much white
pith, but now and again you get a big bright yellow one from those
trees that have been imported, and these are very pithy and in full
possession of the flavour of verjuice. They have also got the papaw
on the Coast, the Carica papaya of botanists. It is an insipid
fruit. To the newcomer it is a dreadful nuisance, for no sooner
does an old coaster set eyes on it than he straightway says, "Paw-
paws are awfully good for the digestion, and even if you just hang a
tough fowl or a bit of goat in the tree among the leaves, it gets
tender in no time, for there is an awful lot of pepsine in a paw-
paw,"--which there is not, papaine being its active principle.
After hearing this hymn of praise to the papaw some hundreds of
times, it palls, and you usually arrive at this tired feeling about
the thing by the time you reach the Gold Coast, for it is a most
common object, and the same man will say the same thing about it a
dozen times a day if he gets the chance. I got heartily sick of it
on my first voyage out, and rashly determined to check the old
coaster in this habit of his, preparatory to stamping the practice
out. It was one of my many failures. I soon met an old coaster
with a papaw fruit in sight, and before he had time to start, I
boldly got away with "The paw-paw is awfully good for the
digestion," hoping that this display of knowledge would impress him
and exempt me from hearing the rest of the formula. But no. "Right
you are," said he solemnly. "It's a powerful thing is the paw-paw.
Why, the other day we had a sad case along here. You know what a
nuisance young assistants are, bothering about their chop, and
scorpions in their beds and boots, and what not and a half, and
then, when you have pulled them through these, and often enough
before, pegging out with fever, or going on the fly in the native
town. Did you know poor B---? Well! he's dead now, had fever and
went off like a babe in eight hours though he'd been out fourteen
years for A--- and D---. They sent him out a new book-keeper, a
tender young thing with a dairymaid complexion and the notion that
he'd got the indigestion. He fidgeted about it something awful.
One night there was a big paw-paw on the table for evening chop, and
so B---, who was an awfully good chap, told him about how good it
was for the digestion. The book-keeper said his trouble always came
on two hours after eating, and asked if he might take a bit of the
thing to his room. 'Certainly,' says B---, and as the paw-paw
wasn't cut at that meal the book-keeper quietly took it off whole
with him.
"In the morning time he did not turn up. B---, just before
breakfast, went to his room and he wasn't there, but he noticed the
paw-paw was on the bed and that was all, so he thought the book-
keeper must have gone for a walk, being, as it were, a bit too
tender to have gone on the fly as yet. So he just told the store
clerk to tell the people to return him to the firm when they found
him straying around lost, and thought no more about it, being, as it
was, mail-day, and him busy.
"Well! Fortunately the steward boy put that paw-paw on the table
again for twelve o'clock chop. If it hadn't been for that, not a
living soul would have known the going of the book-keeper. For when
B--- cut it open, there, right inside it, were nine steel trouser-
buttons, a Waterbury watch, and the poor young fellow's keys. For
you see, instead of his digesting his dinner with that paw-paw, the
paw-paw took charge and digested him, dinner and all, and when B---
interrupted it, it was just getting a grip on the steel things.
There's an awful lot of pepsine in a paw-paw, and if you hang, etc.,
etc."
I collapsed, feebly murmuring that it was very interesting, but sad
for the poor young fellow's friends.
"Not necessarily," said the old coaster. So he had the last word,
and never again will I attempt to alter the ways of the genuine old
coaster. What you have got to do with him is to be very thankful
you have had the honour of knowing him.
Still I think we do over-estimate the value of the papaw, although I
certainly did once myself hang the leg of a goat no mortal man could
have got tooth into, on to a papaw tree with a bit of string for the
night. In the morning it was clean gone, string and all; but
whether it was the pepsine, the papaine, or a purloining pagan that
was the cause of its departure there was no evidence to show. Yet I
am myself, as Hans Breitmann says, "still skebdigal" as to the
papaw, and I dare say you are too.
But I must forthwith stop writing about the Gold Coast, or I shall
go on telling you stories and wasting your time, not to mention the
danger of letting out those which would damage the nerves of the
cultured of temperate climes, such as those relating to the youth
who taught himself French from a six months' method book; of the man
who wore brass buttons; the moving story of three leeches and two
gentlemen; the doctor up a creek; and the reason why you should not
eat pork along here because all the natives have either got the
guinea-worm, or kraw-kraw or ulcers; and then the pigs go and--dear
me! it was a near thing that time. I'll leave off at once.
CHAPTER II. FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS.
Giving some account of the occupation of this island by the whites
and the manners and customs of the blacks peculiar to it.
Our outward voyage really terminated at Calabar, and it terminated
gorgeously in fireworks and what not, in honour of the coming of
Lady MacDonald, the whole settlement, white and black, turning out
to do her honour to the best of its ability; and its ability in this
direction was far greater than, from my previous knowledge of Coast
conditions, I could have imagined possible. Before Sir Claude
MacDonald settled down again to local work, he and Lady MacDonald
crossed to Fernando Po, still in the Batanga, and I accompanied
them, thus getting an opportunity of seeing something of Spanish
official circles.
I had heard sundry noble legends of Fernando Po, and seen the coast
and a good deal of the island before, but although I had heard much
of the Governor, I had never met him until I went up to his
residence with Lady MacDonald and the Consul-General. He was a
delightful person, who, as a Spanish naval officer, some time
resident in Cuba, had picked up a lot of English, with a strong
American accent clinging to it. He gave a most moving account of
how, as soon as his appointment as Governor was announced, all his
friends and acquaintances carefully explained to him that this
appointment was equivalent to execution, only more uncomfortable in
the way it worked out. During the outward voyage this was daily
confirmed by the stories told by the sailors and merchants
personally acquainted with the place, who were able to support their
information with dates and details of the decease of the victims to
the climate.
Still he kept up a good heart, but when he arrived at the island he
found his predecessor had died of fever; and he himself, the day
after landing, went down with a bad attack and he was placed in a
bed--the same bed, he was mournfully informed, in which the last
Governor had expired. Then he did believe, all in one awful lump,
all the stories he had been told, and added to their horrors a few
original conceptions of death and purgatory, and a lot of
transparent semi-formed images of his own delirium. Fortunately
both prophecy and personal conviction alike miscarried, and the
Governor returned from the jaws of death. But without a moment's
delay he withdrew from the Port of Clarence and went up the mountain
to Basile, which is in the neighbourhood of the highest native
village, where he built himself a house, and around it a little
village of homes for the most unfortunate set of human beings I have
ever laid eye on. They are the remnant of a set of Spanish
colonists, who had been located at some spot in the Spanish
possessions in Morocco, and finding that place unfit to support
human life, petitioned the Government to remove them and let them
try colonising elsewhere.
The Spanish Government just then had one of its occasional fits of
interest in Fernando Po, and so shipped them here, and the Governor,
a most kindly and generous man, who would have been a credit to any
country, established them and their families around him at Basile,
to share with him the advantages of the superior elevation;
advantages he profoundly believed in, and which he has always placed
at the disposal of any sick white man on the island, of whatsoever
nationality or religion. Undoubtedly the fever is not so severe at
Basile as in the lowlands, but there are here the usual drawbacks to
West African high land, namely an over supply of rain, and equally
saturating mists, to say nothing of sudden and extreme alternations
of temperature, and so the colonists still fall off, and their
children die continuously from the various entozoa which abound upon
the island.
When the Governor first settled upon the mountain he was very
difficult to get at for business purposes, and a telephone was
therefore run up to him from Clarence through the forest, and Spain
at large felt proud at this dashing bit of enterprise in modern
appliance. Alas! the primaeval forests of Fernando Po were also
charmed with the new toy, and they talked to each other on it with
their leaves and branches to such an extent that a human being could
not get a word in edgeways. So the Governor had to order the
construction of a road along the course of the wire to keep the
trees off it, but unfortunately the telephone is still an uncertain
means of communication, because another interruption in its
usefulness still afflicts it, namely the indigenous natives' habit
of stealing bits out of its wire, for they are fully persuaded that
they cannot be found out in their depredations provided they take
sufficient care that they are not caught in the act. The Governor
is thus liable to be cut off at any moment in the middle of a
conversation with Clarence, and the amount of "Hellos" "Are you
theres?" and "Speak louder, pleases" in Spanish that must at such
times be poured out and wasted in the lonely forests before the
break is realised and an unfortunate man sent off as a messenger, is
terrible to think of.
But nothing would persuade the Governor to come a mile down towards
Clarence until the day he should go there to join the vessel that
was to take him home, and I am bound to say he looked as if the
method was a sound one, for he was an exceedingly healthy, cheery-
looking man.
Fernando Po is said to be a comparatively modern island, and not so
very long ago to have been connected with the mainland, the strait
between them being only nineteen miles across, and not having any
deep soundings. {37} I fail to see what grounds there are for these
ideas, for though Fernando Po's volcanoes are not yet extinct, but
merely have their fires banked, yet, on the other hand, the island
has been in existence sufficiently long to get itself several
peculiar species of animals and plants, and that is a thing which
takes time. I myself do not believe that this island was ever
connected with the continent, but arose from the ocean as the result
of a terrific upheaval in the chain of volcanic activity which runs
across the Atlantic from the Cameroon Mountains in a SSW. direction
to Anno Bom island, and possibly even to the Tristan da Cunha group
midway between the Cape and South America.
These volcanic islands are all of extreme beauty and fertility.
They consist of Fernando Po (10,190 ft.); Principe (3000 ft.); San
Thome (6,913 ft.); and Anno Bom (1,350 ft.). San Thome and Principe
are Portuguese possessions, Fernando Po and Anno Bom Spanish, and
they are all exceedingly unhealthy. San Thome is still called "The
Dutchman's Church-yard," on account of the devastation its climate
wrought among the Hollanders when they once occupied it; as they
seem, at one time or another, to have occupied all Portuguese
possessions out here, during the long war these two powers waged
with each other for supremacy in the Bights, a supremacy that
neither of them attained to. Principe is said to be the most
unhealthy, and the reason of the difference in this particular
between Principe and Anno Bom is said to arise from the fact that
the former is on the Guinea Current--a hot current--and Anno Bom on
the Equatorial, which averages 10 degree cooler than its neighbour.
The shores of San Thome are washed by both currents, and the
currents round Fernando Po are in a mixed and uncertain state. It
is difficult, unless you have haunted these seas, to realise the
interest we take down there in currents; particularly when you are
navigating small sailing boats, a pursuit I indulge in necessarily
from my fishing practices. Their effect on the climate too is very
marked. If we could only arrange for some terrific affair to take
place in the bed of the Atlantic, that would send that precious
Guinea current to the place it evidently comes from, and get the
cool Equatorial alongside the mainland shore, West Africa would be
quite another place.
Fernando Po is the most important island as regards size on the West
African coast, and at the same time one of the most beautiful in the
world. It is a great volcanic mass with many craters, and
culminates in the magnificent cone, Clarence Peak, called by the
Spaniards, Pico de Santa Isabel, by the natives of the island O
Wassa. Seen from the sea or from the continent it looks like an
immense single mountain that has floated out to sea. It is visible
during clear weather (and particularly sharply visible in the
strange clearness you get after a tornado) from a hundred miles to
seawards, and anything more perfect than Fernando Po when you sight
it, as you occasionally do from far-away Bonny Bar, in the sunset,
floating like a fairy island made of gold or of amethyst, I cannot
conceive. It is almost equally lovely at close quarters, namely
from the mainland at Victoria, nineteen miles distant. Its moods of
beauty are infinite; for the most part gentle and gorgeous, but I
have seen it silhouetted hard against tornado-clouds, and grandly
grim from the upper regions of its great brother Mungo. And as for
Fernando Po in full moonlight--well there! you had better go and see
it yourself.
The whole island is, or rather I should say was, heavily forested
almost to its peak, with a grand and varied type of forest, very
rich in oil palms and tree-ferns, and having an undergrowth
containing an immense variety and quantity of ferns and mosses.
Sugar-cane also grows wild here, an uncommon thing in West Africa.
The last botanical collection of any importance made from these
forests was that of Herr Mann, and its examination showed that
Abyssinian genera and species predominated, and that many species
similar to those found in the mountains of Mauritius, the Isle de
Bourbon, and Madagascar, were present. The number of European
plants (forty-three genera, twenty-seven species) is strikingly
large, most of the British forms being represented chiefly at the
higher elevations. What was more striking was that it showed that
South African forms were extremely rare, and not one of the
characteristic types of St. Helena occurred.
Cocoa, coffee, and cinchona, alas! flourish in Fernando Po, as the
coffee suffers but little from the disease that harasses it on the
mainland at Victoria, and this is the cause of the great destruction
of the forest that is at present taking place. San Thome, a few
years ago, was discovered by its surprised neighbours to be amassing
great wealth by growing coffee, and so Fernando Po and Principe
immediately started to amass great wealth too, and are now hard at
work with gangs of miscellaneous natives got from all parts of the
Coast save the Kru. For to the Kruboy, "Panier," as he calls
"Spaniard," is a name of horror worse even than Portugee, although
he holds "God made white man and God made black man, but dem debil
make Portugee," and he also remembers an unfortunate affair that
occurred some years ago now, in connection with coffee-growing.
A number of Krumen engaged themselves for a two years' term of
labour on the Island of San Thome, and when they arrived there, were
set to work on coffee plantations by the Portuguese. Now
agricultural work is "woman's palaver," but nevertheless the Krumen
made shift to get through with it, vowing the while no doubt, as
they hopefully notched away the moons on their tally-sticks, that
they would 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 were put off from
time 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 ever getting free, started off secretly in ones and twos 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 result was a tragedy, but it might easily have been worse; for a
few, a very few, were picked up alive by English vessels and taken
back to their beloved "We country" to tell the tale. But many a
canoe was found with a dead Kruboy or so in it; and many a one
which, floating bottom upwards, graphically spoke of madness caused
by hunger, thirst, and despair having driven its occupants overboard
to the sharks.
My Portuguese friends assure me that there was never thought of
permanently detaining the boys, and that they were only just keeping
them until other labourers arrived to take their place on the
plantations. I quite believe them, for I have seen too much of the
Portuguese in Africa to believe that they would, in a wholesale way,
be cruel to natives. But I am not in the least surprised that the
poor Krumen took the Portuguese logo and amanha for Eternity itself,
for I have frequently done so.
The greatest length of the island lies N.E. and S.W., and 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
any one taking much notice of them--is a very remarkable place, and
except perhaps Gaboon the finest harbour on the West Coast. The
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 high, and the
place, to put it very mildly, 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 fathoms 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
fathoms, and outside the submerged rim there is deeper water again,
but rocky shoals abound. On the top of the shore cliffs stands the
dilapidated little town of Clarence, on a plateau that falls away
slightly towards the mountain for about a mile, when the ground
commences 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 landing, and there is a
little pier too, but as it is usually 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 you have to land on the
beach, and when you have done this you make your way up a very steep
path, cut in the cliffside, to the town. When you get there you
find yourself 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 of expectation and alarm not untinged with horror.
Clarence, nay, the whole of Fernando Po, was about to become so
rackety and dissipated 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.
When I next arrived in Clarence it was just as sound asleep and its
streets as weed-grown as ever, although the cafe was open. My idea
is that 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 evil influence, for there are on
the island fifty-two white laymen, and fifty-four priests to take
charge of them {44}--the extra two being, I presume, to look after
the Governor's conduct, although this worthy man made a most
spirited protest against this view when I suggested it to him; and
in addition to the priests there are several missionaries of the
Methodist mission, and also a white gentleman who has invented a new
religion. Anyhow, the cafe smoulders like a damp squib.
When you spend the day on shore and when, having exhausted 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 disposal 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, and applying elsewhere for
advice you 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
English 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 tramway was finished,
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 right, and others say they are all wrong. And
so the end of it will 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 will run up continents, and raise and
lower oceans to explain them, and they will doubtless get more
excitement and pleasure out of them than you can nowadays.
The history of the English occupation of Fernando Po seems often
misunderstood, and now and then one hears our Government reviled for
handing it over to the Spaniards. But this was unavoidable, for we
had it as a loan from Spain in 1827 as a naval station for our
ships, at that time energetically commencing to suppress the slave
trade in the Bights; the idea being that this island would afford a
more healthy and convenient spot for a naval depot than any port on
the coast itself.
More convenient Fernando Po certainly was, but not more healthy, and
ever since 1827 it has been accumulating for itself an evil
reputation for unhealthiness which is only languishing just at
present because there is an interval between its epidemics--fever in
Fernando Po, even more than on the mainland, having periodic
outbursts of a more serious type than the normal intermittent and
remittent of the Coast. Moreover, Fernando Po shares with Senegal
the undoubted yet doubtful honour of having had regular yellow
fever. In 1862 and 1866 this disease was imported by a ship that
had come from Havana. Since then it has not appeared in the
definite South American 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 Fete Nationale was in one
district devoted by public consent to the purchase of coffins,
required by an overwhelming outbreak of Yellow Jack.
In 1858 the Spanish Government thinking, presumably, that the slave
trade was suppressed enough, or at any rate to a sufficiently
inconvenient extent, re-claimed 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 West African
Company a large grant of land, and had collected round it a
gathering of Sierra Leonians and other artisan and trading Africans
who were attracted to Clarence by the work made by the naval
station; and these people, with the English traders who also settled
here for a like reason, were the founders of Clarence Town. The
declaration of the Spanish Government stating that only Roman
Catholic missions would be countenanced caused the Baptists to
abandon their possessions and withdraw to the mainland in Ambas Bay,
where they have since remained, and nowadays Protestantism is
represented by a Methodist Mission which has a sub-branch on the
mainland on the Akwayafe River and one on the Qua Ibo.
The Spaniards, 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 Jesuit priests, a
secretary, a commissariat officer, a custom-house clerk, and a
transport, the Santa Maria, with a number of emigrant families.
This attempt to colonise Fernando Po should have at least done the
good of preventing such experiments ever being tried again with
women and children, for of these unfortunate creatures--for whom, in
spite of its being the wet season, no houses had been provided--more
than 20 per cent. died in the space of five months. Mr. Hutchinson,
who was English Consul at the time, tells us that "In a very 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, save the expression of a sort of torpid carelessness as
to how soon it might be their turn to drop off and die. The
Portino, a steamer, carried back fifty of them to Cadiz, who looked
when they embarked more like living skeletons of skin and bone than
animated human beings." {47} I quote this not to cast reproach on
the Spanish Government, but merely to give a fact, a case in point,
of the deadly failure of endeavours to colonise on the West Coast, a
thing which is even now occasionally attempted, always with the same
sad results, though in most cases these attempts are now made by
religious but misinformed people under Bishop Taylor's mission.
The Spaniards did not entirely confine their attention to planting
colonists in a ready-made state on the island. As soon as they had
settled themselves and built their barracks and Government House,
they set to work and cleared away the bush for an area of from four
to six miles round the town. 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 1471, {48a} and
who exchanged it and Anno Bom in 1778 to the Spaniards for the
little island of Catalina and the colony of Sacramento in South
America, did not do anything to develop 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 natives 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--and they lost in addition
to the colonists a terrible quantity of their sailors, in Concepcion
Bay. {48b} 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 excellent enterprise, and import the Baptist
Mission, which they hold as a less estimable undertaking; but there!
that's nothing to what the Baptist Mission hold regarding the
Spaniards. For my own part, I wish the Spaniards better luck this
time in their activity, for in directing it to plantations they are
on a truer and safer road to wealth than they have been with their
previous importations of Cuban political prisoners and ready-made
families of colonists, and I hope they will send home those
unfortunate wretches they have there now, and commence, in their
expected two years, to reap the profits of the coffee and cocoa.
Certainly the chances are 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 Wednesday morning, within a
period, he carefully says, of thirty-six hours. I have seen this
sort of thing over in Victoria, but I like to get a grown, strong
man, and a Consul of Her 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, although presenting a series of interesting problems to the
ethnologist, both from their insular position, and their
differentiation from any of the mainland peoples, are still but
little known. To 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 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, and 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 himself 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 those beads of his. Cloth he does not want; he utterly fails to
see what good the stuff is, for he abhors clothes. 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 told me the other day that when, a week or
so before, his ship had 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 and get employment on
coffee plantations, but that the Portuguese planters would not
engage them in an unclothed state.
You must not, however, imagine that the Bubi is neglectful of his
personal appearance. In his way he is quite a dandy. But his idea
of decoration goes in the direction of a plaster of "tola" pomatum
over his body, and above all a hat. This hat may be an antique
European one, or a bound-round handkerchief, but it is more
frequently a confection of native manufacture, and great taste and
variety are displayed in its make. They are of plaited palm leaf--
that's all you can safely generalise regarding them--for sometimes
they have 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 hats are much adorned with oddments of birds' plumes, and one
chief I knew had quite a Regent-street Dolly Varden creation which
he used to affix to his wool in a most intelligent way with bonnet-
pins made of wood. These hats are also a peculiarity of the Bubi,
for none of the mainlanders care a row of pins for hats, except "for
dandy," to wear occasionally, whereas the Bubi wears his
perpetually, although he has by no means the same amount of sun to
guard against owing to the glorious forests of his island.
For earrings the Bubi wears pieces of wood stuck through the lobe of
the ear, and although this is not a decorative habit still it is
less undecorative than that of certain mainland friends of mine in
this region, who wear large and necessarily dripping lumps of fat in
their ears and in their hair. His neck is hung round with jujus on
strings--bits of the backbones of pythons, teeth, feathers, and
antelope horns, and occasionally a bit of fat in a bag. Round his
upper arm are bracelets, preferably made of ivory got from the
mainland, for celluloid bracelets carefully imported for his benefit
he refuses to look at. Often these bracelets are made of beads, or
a circlet of leaves, and when on the war-path an armlet of twisted
grass is always worn by the men. Men and women alike wear armlets,
and in the case of the women they seem to be put on when young, for
you see puffs of flesh growing out from between them. They are not
entirely for decoration, serving also as pockets, for under them men
stick a knife, and 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 tshibbu, small
pieces cut from Achatectonia shells, which form the native currency
of the island. These shells are also made into veils worn by the
women at their wedding.
This native coinage-equivalent is very interesting, for such things
are exceedingly rare in West Africa. The only other instance I
personally know of a tribe in this part of the world using a native-
made coin is that of the Fans, who use little bundles of imitation
axe-heads. Dr. Oscar Baumann, who knows more than any one else
about these Bubis, thinks, I believe, that these bits of
Achatectonia shells may have 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 wide 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, {51} negroes, who act as middle-men between
the Bubis and the whites.
You will often be told that the Bubis are singularly bad house-
builders, indeed that they make no definite houses at 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 this are four-cornered, 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 surrounded with a
dug-out drain to carry off surface water. These houses, as usual on
the West Coast, are divisible into two 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 affairs 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 relatively 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 successfully 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 easily 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 we except pythons--which attain a great
size on the island--and crocodiles. Elephants, though plentiful 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 (Lutra poensis) with
yellow brown fur often quite golden underneath; a creature which is,
I believe, identical with the Angola 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, where a
distinguished sportsman once told me: "You go shoot thing with gun.
Berrah well--but you no get him thing for sure. No, sah. Dem gun
make nize. Berrah well. You fren hear dem nize and come look him,
and you hab to go share what you done kill. Or bad man hear him
nize, and he come look him, and you no fit to get share--you fit to
get kill yusself. 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 swell up
and bust."
The Bubis also fish, mostly by basket traps, but they are not
experts either in this or in canoe management. Their chief sea-
shore sport is hunting for the eggs of the turtles who 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 envelope, and
are much valued 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 abound here.
Their domestic animals are the usual African list; cats, dogs,
sheep, goats, and poultry. Pigs there are 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 nuisance in Clarence that the Government issued
instructions that all pigs without rings in their noses--i.e. all in
a condition to grub up back gardens--should be forthwith shot if
found abroad. This proclamation was issued by the governmental
bellman thus: --"I say--I say--I say--I say. Suppose pig walk--iron
no live for him nose! Gun shoot. Kill him one time. Hear re! hear
re!"
However a good many pigs with no iron living in their noses got
adrift and escaped into the interior, and have flourished like the
green bay-tree, destroying the Bubi's plantation and eating his
yams, while the Bubi retaliating 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
discouraging 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 his 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 will come voluntarily and take service in Clarence, submit to
clothes, and rapidly pick up the ways of a house or store. And 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 suddenly appears. The Bubi has gone, without
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 in his or her particular village--
clothes-less, comfortable, utterly unconcerned, and unaware that he
or she has lost anything by leaving Clarence and Civilisation. It
is this conduct that gains for the Bubi the reputation of being a
bigger idiot than he really is.
For West Africans their agriculture is of a fairly high description-
-the noteworthy point about it, however, is the absence of manioc.
Manioc is grown on Fernando Po, but only by the Portos. The Bubi
cultivated plants are yams (Dioscorea alata), koko (Colocasia
esculenta--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 districts 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 ordinary native drink. Rum is held in
high esteem, but used in a general way in moderation as a cordial
and a treat, for the Bubi is, like the rest of the West African
natives, by no means an habitual drunkard. Gin he dislikes. {55}
And I may remark you will find the same opinion in regard to the
Dualla in Cameroons river--on the undeniable authority of Dr.
Buchner, and my own extensive experience of the West Coast bears it
out.
Physically the Bubis are a fairly well-formed race of medium height;
they are decidedly inferior to the Benga or the Krus, but quite on a
level with the Effiks. The women indeed are very comely: their
colour is bronze and their skin the skin of the Bantu. Beards are
not uncommon among the men, and these give their faces possibly more
than anything else, a different look to the faces of the Effiks or
the Duallas. Indeed the people physically most like the Bubis that
I have ever seen, are undoubtedly the Bakwiri of Cameroons Mountain,
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 West African at any rate--arises from
his deliberately pulling his hair out--his beard, moustache,
whiskers, and, occasionally, as among the Fans, his eyebrows.
Dr. Baumann, the great authority on the Bubi language says it is a
Bantu stock. {56} I know nothing of it myself save 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,
who are very good at figures, surpassing the Bantu in this, as
indeed they do in most branches of intellectual activity.
But the most remarkable instance of inferiority the Bubis display is
their ignorance regarding methods of working iron. I do not know
that iron in a native state is found on Fernando Po, but scrap-iron
they have been in touch with for some hundreds of years. The
mainlanders are all cognisant of native methods of working iron,
although many tribes of them now depend entirely on European trade
for their supply of knives, etc., and this difference between them
and the Bubis would seem to indicate that the migration of the
latter to the island must have taken place at a fairly remote
period, a period before the iron-working tribes came down 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 moreover which is likewise to be found upon the mainland, which
says he was driven from the district north of the Gaboon estuary by
the coming of the M'pongwe to the coast, and as this legend is the
more likely of the two I think 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 youth of many Porto-negroes on Fernando Po, he
was making and using stone implements, and none of the tribes within
the memory of man have done this on the mainland. It is true that
up the Niger and about Benin and Axim you get polished stone celts,
but these are regarded as weird affairs,--thunderbolts--and suitable
only for grinding up and making into medicine; there is no trace in
the traditions of these places, as far as I have been able to find,
of any time at which stone implements were in common use, and
certainly the M'pongwe have not been a very long time on the coast,
for their coming is still remembered in their traditions. The Bubi
stone implements I have seen twice, but on neither occasion could I
secure one, and although I 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 because
the ground is witched, demonstrated by outbreaks of sickness, or
because another village-full of his fellow creatures, or a horrid
white 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 village with intent to devote the
remainder of his life to quietly but thoroughly converting it. Next
morning, when he rose up, he found himself alone, the people having
taken all their portable possessions and vanished to build another
village elsewhere. The worthy Father spent some time chivying 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 this 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-expert, 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-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.
The basket-work of the Bubis is of a superior order: the baskets
they make to hold the 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 my old friends the Kabinders, from whom a
good many of those slaves 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 out 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 with 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" (profound),
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 experiences of the singer or the present company's
little peculiarities; with a very frequent chorus, old and
conventional.
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 Igalwa, of which
I will speak later.
The dances I have no personal knowledge of, but there is nothing 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 my old friend the Batuco
in all its beauty. But there is a distinct peculiarity 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 instrument 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 instrument, I warn any one 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 because I
rather question whether I may be allowed to refer to a very old
bullock hide--unmounted--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 artistes by being shaken as
accompaniments to other instruments--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 improve 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 festivities of the Bubis--dances, weddings, feasts, etc.,--at
which this miscellaneous collection of instruments are used in
concert, usually take place in November, 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 January, and when he
pours it forth on that bow affair it makes the lonely European long
for home.
Divisions of time the Bubi can hardly be said to have, but this is a
point upon which all West Africans are rather weak, particularly the
Bantu. He has, however, a definite name for November, December, and
January--the dry season months--calling them Lobos.
The Fetish 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 would repay
further investigation; and as by fetish I always mean the governing
but underlying ideas of a man's life, we will commence with the
child. Nothing, as far as I have been able to make out, happens to
him, for fetish reasons, when he first appears on the scene. He
receives at birth, as is usual, a name which is changed for another
on his initiation into the secret society, this secret society
having also, as usual, a secret language. About the age of three or
five years the boy is decorated, under the auspices of the witch
doctor, with certain 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 much, but
they paint themselves, as the mainlanders do, with a red paint made
by burning some herb and mixing the ash with clay or oil, and they
occasionally--whether for ju-ju 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 any
one who knows much more. Hutchinson, {61} 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 Wassa, 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 Lobe, 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 ju-ju of Lobe's. Dr. Baumann says
that the lake at Riabba from which the spirit Uapa rises is more
holy, and that he is small, and resides in a chasm in a rock whose
declivity 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 given suitable
offerings, reveal 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 any one 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 which no stranger must pass through.
The government is a peculiar one for West Africa. Every village has
its chief, but the whole tribe obey one great chief or king who
lives in the crater-ravine at Riabba. This individual is called
Moka, but whether he is now the same man referred to by Rogoszinsky,
Mr. Holland, and the Rev. Hugh 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. Even the indefatigable Dr. Baumann failed to see Moka,
though he evidently found out a great deal about the methods of his
administration 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 his time the whole island was in a state of
internecine war: murder was frequent, and property unsafe. Now
their social condition, according to the Doctor's account, is a
model to Europe, let alone Africa. Civil wars have been abolished,
disputes between villages being referred to arbitration, and murder
is swiftly and surely punished. If the criminal has bolted into the
forest and cannot be found, his village is made responsible, and has
to pay a fine in goats, sheep and tobacco to the value of 16 pounds.
Theft is extremely rare and offences against the moral code also,
the Bubis having an 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 slave women who had suffered for
theft. Slaves the Bubis do have, but their condition is the mild,
poor relation or retainer form of slavery you find in Calabar, and
differs from the Dualla form, for the slaves live 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 village and have 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, where
the bodies are buried in the forest with their heads just sticking
out of the ground. In other districts the body is also buried in
the forest, but is completely covered 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 observation, thereby giving us
more valuable information about them and their island than we
otherwise should possess. Mr. Hutchinson resided many years on
Fernando Po, in the capacity of H. B. M.'s Consul, with his hands
full of the affairs of the Oil Rivers 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, Mr. Janikowski, about complete our series of
authorities on the island. Dr. Baumann thinks they got their
information from Porto sources--sources the learned Doctor evidently
regards as more full of imagination than solid fact, but, as you
know, all African travellers are occasionally 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?" "Porto." "Ke Soko?'"
"Hatsi soko": --"Who are you?" "Porto." "What's the news?" "No
news."
Although these Portos are less interesting to the ethnologist 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 white 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 bays, and here
in fairly neat houses they live, collecting palm-oil from the Bubis,
and making themselves little cacao plantations, 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 practically
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 "Nanny
Po" ladies are celebrated for their beauty all along the West Coast,
and very justly. They are not however, as they themselves think,
the most beautiful women in this part of the world. Not at least to
my way of thinking. 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 West 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 Nanny 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 I will remain, for the present, the faithful
admirer of my sable Ingramina, the Igalwa, with the little red
blossoms stuck in her night-black hair, and a sweet soft look and
word for every one, but particularly for her ugly husband Isaac the
"Jack Wash."
CHAPTER III. VOYAGE DOWN COAST.
Wherein the voyager before leaving the Rivers discourses on dangers,
to which is added some account of Mangrove swamps and the creatures
that abide therein.
I left Calabar in May and joined the Benguela off Lagos Bar. My
voyage down coast in her was a very pleasant one and full of
instruction, for Mr. Fothergill, who was her purser, had in former
years resided in Congo Francais as a merchant, and to Congo Francais
I was bound with an empty hold as regards local knowledge of the
district. He was one of that class of men, of which you most
frequently find representatives among the merchants, who do not
possess the power so many men along here do possess (a power that
always amazes me), of living for a considerable time in a district
without taking any interest in it, keeping their whole attention
concentrated on the point of how long it will be before their time
comes to get out of it. Mr. Fothergill evidently had much knowledge
and experience of the Fernan Vaz district and its natives. He had,
I should say, overdone his experiences with the natives, as far as
personal comfort and pleasure at the time went, having been nearly
killed and considerably chivied by them. Now I do not wish a man,
however much I may deplore his total lack of local knowledge, to go
so far as this. Mr. Fothergill gave his accounts of these incidents
calmly, and in an undecorated way that gave them a power and
convincingness verging on being unpleasant, although useful, to a
person who was going into the district where they had occurred, for
one felt there was no mortal reason why one should not personally
get involved in similar affairs. And I must here acknowledge the
great subsequent service Mr. Fothergill's wonderfully accurate
descriptions of the peculiar characteristics of the Ogowe forests
were to me when I subsequently came to deal with these forests on my
own account, as every district of forest has peculiar
characteristics of its own which you require to know. I should like
here to speak of West Coast dangers because I fear you may think
that I am careless of, or do not believe in them, neither of which
is the case. The more you know of the West Coast of Africa, the
more you realise its dangers. For example, on your first voyage out
you hardly believe the stories of fever told by the old Coasters.
That is because you do not then understand the type of man who is
telling them, a man who goes to his death with a joke in his teeth.
But a short experience of your own, particularly if you happen on a
place having one of its periodic epidemics, soon demonstrates that
the underlying horror of the thing is there, a rotting corpse which
the old Coaster has dusted over with jokes to cover it so that it
hardly shows at a distance, but which, when you come yourself to
live alongside, you soon become cognisant of. Many men, when they
have got ashore and settled, realise this, and let the horror get a
grip on them; a state briefly and locally described as funk, and a
state that usually ends fatally; and you can hardly blame them.
Why, I know of a case myself. A young man who had never been
outside an English country town before in his life, from family
reverses had to take a situation as book-keeper down in the Bights.
The factory he was going to was in an isolated out-of-the-way place
and not in a settlement, and when the ship called off it, he was put
ashore in one of the ship's boats with his belongings, and a case or
so of goods. There were only the firm's beach-boys down at the
surf, and as the steamer was in a hurry the officer from the ship
did not go up to the factory with him, but said good-bye and left
him alone with a set of naked savages as he thought, but really of
good kindly Kru boys on the beach. He could not understand what
they said, nor they what he said, and so he walked up to the house
and on to the verandah and tried to find the Agent he had come out
to serve under. He looked into the open-ended dining-room and shyly
round the verandah, and then sat down and waited for some one to
turn up. Sundry natives turned up, and said a good deal, but no one
white or comprehensible, so in desperation he made another and a
bolder tour completely round the verandah and noticed a most
peculiar noise in one of the rooms and an infinity of flies going
into the venetian shuttered window. Plucking up courage he went in
and found what was left of the white Agent, a considerable quantity
of rats, and most of the flies in West Africa. He then presumably
had fever, and he was taken off, a fortnight afterwards, by a French
boat, to whom the natives signalled, and he is not coming down the
Coast again. Some men would have died right out from a shock like
this.
But most of the new-comers do not get a shock of this order. They
either die themselves or get more gradually accustomed to this sort
of thing, when they come to regard death and fever as soldiers, who
on a battle-field sit down, and laugh and talk round a camp fire
after a day's hard battle, in which they have seen their friends and
companions falling round them; all the time knowing that to-morrow
the battle comes again and that to-morrow night they themselves may
never see.
It is not hard-hearted callousness, it is only their way. Michael
Scott put this well in Tom Cringle's Log, in his account of the
yellow fever during the war in the West Indies. Fever, though the
chief danger, particularly to people who go out to settlements, is
not the only one; but as the other dangers, except perhaps domestic
poisoning, are incidental to pottering about in the forests, or on
the rivers, among the unsophisticated tribes, I will not dwell on
them. They can all be avoided by any one with common sense, by
keeping well out of the districts in which they occur; and so I warn
the general reader that if he goes out to West Africa, it is not
because I said the place was safe, or its dangers overrated. The
cemeteries of the West Coast are full of the victims of those people
who have said that Coast fever is "Cork fever," and a man's own
fault, which it is not; and that natives will never attack you
unless you attack them: which they will--on occasions.
My main aim in going to Congo Francais was to get up above the tide
line of the Ogowe River and there collect fishes; for my object on
this voyage was to collect fish from a river north of the Congo. I
had hoped this river would have been the Niger, for Sir George
Goldie had placed at my disposal great facilities for carrying on
work there in comfort; but for certain private reasons I was
disinclined to go from the Royal Niger Protectorate into the Royal
Niger Company's territory; and the Calabar, where Sir Claude
MacDonald did everything he possibly could to assist me, I did not
find a good river for me to collect fishes in. These two rivers
failing me, from no fault of either of their own presiding genii, my
only hope of doing anything now lay on the South West Coast river,
the Ogowe, and everything there depended on Mr. Hudson's attitude
towards scientific research in the domain of ichthyology.
Fortunately for me that gentleman elected to take a favourable view
of this affair, and in every way in his power assisted me during my
entire stay in Congo Francais. But before I enter into a detailed
description of this wonderful bit of West Africa, I must give you a
brief notice of the manners, habits and customs of West Coast rivers
in general, to make the thing more intelligible.
There is an uniformity in the habits of West Coast rivers, from the
Volta to the Coanza, which is, when you get used to it, very taking.
Excepting the Congo, the really great river comes out to sea with as
much mystery as possible; lounging lazily along among its mangrove
swamps in a what's-it-matter-when-one-comes-out and where's-the-
hurry style, through quantities of channels inter-communicating with
each other. Each channel, at first sight as like the other as peas
in a pod, is bordered on either side by green-black walls of
mangroves, which Captain Lugard graphically described as seeming "as
if they had lost all count of the vegetable proprieties, and were
standing on stilts with their branches tucked up out of the wet,
leaving their gaunt roots exposed in midair." High-tide or low-
tide, there is little difference in the water; the river, be it
broad or narrow, deep or shallow, looks like a pathway of polished
metal; for it is as heavy weighted with stinking mud as water e'er
can be, ebb or flow, year out and year in. But the difference in
the banks, though an unending alternation between two appearances,
is weird.
At high-water you do not see the mangroves displaying their ankles
in the way that shocked Captain Lugard. They look most respectable,
their foliage rising densely in a wall irregularly striped here and
there by the white line of an aerial root, coming straight down into
the water from some upper branch as straight as a plummet, in the
strange, knowing way an aerial root of a mangrove does, keeping the
hard straight line until it gets some two feet above water-level,
and then spreading out into blunt fingers with which to dip into the
water and grasp the mud. Banks indeed at high water can hardly be
said to exist, the water stretching away into the mangrove swamps
for miles and miles, and you can then go, in a suitable small canoe,
away among these swamps as far as you please.
This is a fascinating pursuit. But it is a pleasure to be indulged
in with caution; for one thing, you are certain to come across
crocodiles. Now a crocodile drifting down in deep water, or lying
asleep with its jaws open on a sand-bank in the sun, is a
picturesque adornment to the landscape when you are on the deck of a
steamer, and you can write home about it and frighten your relations
on your behalf; but when you are away among the swamps in a small
dug-out canoe, and that crocodile and his relations are awake--a
thing he makes a point of being at flood tide because of fish coming
along--and when he has got his foot upon his native heath--that is
to say, his tail within holding reach of his native mud--he is
highly interesting, and you may not be able to write home about him-
-and you get frightened on your own behalf; for crocodiles can, and
often do, in such places, grab at people in small canoes. I have
known of several natives losing their lives in this way; some native
villages are approachable from the main river by a short cut, as it
were, through the mangrove swamps, and the inhabitants of such
villages will now and then go across this way with small canoes
instead of by the constant channel to the village, which is almost
always winding. In addition to this unpleasantness you are liable--
until you realise the danger from experience, or have native advice
on the point--to get tide-trapped away in the swamps, the water
falling round you when you are away in some deep pool or lagoon, and
you find you cannot get back to the main river. Of course if you
really want a truly safe investment in Fame, and really care about
Posterity, and Posterity's Science, you will jump over into the
black batter-like, stinking slime, cheered by the thought of the
terrific sensation you will produce 20,000 years hence, and the care
you will be taken of then by your fellow-creatures, in a museum.
But if you are a mere ordinary person of a retiring nature, like me,
you stop in your lagoon until the tide rises again; most of your
attention is directed to dealing with an "at home" to crocodiles and
mangrove flies, and with the fearful stench of the slime round you.
What little time you have over you will employ in wondering why you
came to West Africa, and why, after having reached this point of
folly, you need have gone and painted the lily and adorned the rose,
by being such a colossal ass as to come fooling about in mangrove
swamps.
Still, even if your own peculiar tastes and avocations do not take
you in small dug-out canoes into the heart of the swamps, you can
observe the difference in the local scenery made by the flowing of
the tide when you are on a vessel stuck on a sand-bank, in the Rio
del Rey for example. Moreover, as you will have little else to
attend to, save mosquitoes and mangrove flies, when in such a
situation, you may as well pursue the study. At the ebb gradually
the foliage of the lower branches of the mangroves grows wet and
muddy, until there is a great black band about three feet deep above
the surface of the water in all directions; gradually a network of
gray-white roots rises up, and below this again, gradually, a slope
of smooth and lead-grey slime. The effect is not in the least as if
the water had fallen, but as if the mangroves had, with one accord,
risen up out of it, and into it again they seem silently to sink
when the flood comes. But by this more safe, if still unpleasant,
method of observing mangrove-swamps, you miss seeing in full the
make of them, for away in their fastnesses the mangroves raise their
branches far above the reach of tide line, and the great gray roots
of the older trees are always sticking up in mid-air. But, fringing
the rivers, there is always a hedge of younger mangroves whose lower
branches get immersed.
At corners here and there from the river face you can see the land
being made from the waters. A mud-bank forms off it, a mangrove
seed lights on it, and the thing's done. Well! not done, perhaps,
but begun; for if the bank is high enough to get exposed at low
water, this pioneer mangrove grows. He has a wretched existence
though. You have only got to look at his dwarfed attenuated form to
see this. He gets joined by a few more bold spirits and they
struggle on together, their network of roots stopping abundance of
mud, and by good chance now and then a consignment of miscellaneous
debris of palm leaves, or a floating tree-trunk, but they always die
before they attain any considerable height. Still even in death
they collect. Their bare white stems remaining like a net gripped
in the mud, so that these pioneer mangrove heroes may be said to
have laid down their lives to make that mud-bank fit for
colonisation, for the time gradually comes when other mangroves can
and do colonise on it, and flourish, extending their territory
steadily; and the mud-bank joins up with, and becomes a part of,
Africa.
Right away on the inland fringe of the swamp--you may go some
hundreds of miles before you get there--you can see the rest of the
process. The mangroves there have risen up, and dried the mud to an
extent that is more than good for themselves, have over civilised
that mud in fact, and so the brackish waters of the tide--which,
although their enemy when too deep or too strong in salt, is
essential to their existence--cannot get to their roots. They have
done this gradually, as a mangrove does all things, but they have
done it, and down on to that mud come a whole set of palms from the
old mainland, who in their early colonisation days go through
similarly trying experiences. First the screw-pines come and live
among them; then the wine-palm and various creepers, and then the
oil-palm; and the debris of these plants being greater and making
better soil than dead mangroves, they work quicker and the mangrove
is doomed. Soon the salt waters are shut right out, the mangrove
dies, and that bit of Africa is made. It is very interesting to get
into these regions; you see along the river-bank a rich, thick,
lovely wall of soft-wooded plants, and behind this you find great
stretches of death;--miles and miles sometimes of gaunt white
mangrove skeletons standing on gray stuff that is not yet earth and
is no longer slime, and through the crust of which you can sink into
rotting putrefaction. Yet, long after you are dead, buried, and
forgotten, this will become a forest of soft-wooded plants and
palms; and finally of hard-wooded trees. Districts of this
description you will find in great sweeps of Kama country for
example, and in the rich low regions up to the base of the Sierra
del Cristal and the Rumby range.
You often hear the utter lifelessness of mangrove-swamps commented
on; why I do not know, for they are fairly heavily stocked with
fauna, though the species are comparatively few. There are the
crocodiles, more of them than any one wants; there are quantities of
flies, particularly the big silent mangrove-fly which lays an egg in
you under the skin; the egg becomes a maggot and stays there until
it feels fit to enter into external life. Then there are "slimy
things that crawl with legs upon a slimy sea," and any quantity of
hopping mud-fish, and crabs, and a certain mollusc, and in the water
various kinds of cat-fish. Birdless they are save for the flocks of
gray parrots that pass over them at evening, hoarsely squarking; and
save for this squarking of the parrots the swamps are silent all the
day, at least during the dry season; in the wet season there is no
silence night or day in West Africa, but that roar of the descending
deluge of rain that is more monotonous and more gloomy than any
silence can be. In the morning you do not hear the long, low,
mellow whistle of the plantain-eaters calling up the dawn, nor in
the evening the clock-bird nor the Handel-Festival-sized choruses of
frogs, or the crickets, that carry on their vesper controversy of
"she did"--"she didn't" so fiercely on hard land.
But the mangrove-swamp follows the general rule for West Africa, and
night in it is noisier than the day. After dark it is full of
noises; grunts from I know not what, splashes from jumping fish, the
peculiar whirr of rushing crabs, and quaint creaking and groaning
sounds from the trees; and--above all in eeriness--the strange whine
and sighing cough of crocodiles.
Great regions of mangrove-swamps are a characteristic feature of the
West African Coast. The first of these lies north of Sierra Leone;
then they occur, but of smaller dimensions--just fringes of river-
outfalls--until you get to Lagos, when you strike the greatest of
them all: --the swamps of the Niger outfalls (about twenty-three
rivers in all) and of the Sombreiro, New Calabar, Bonny, San
Antonio, Opobo (false and true), Kwoibo, Old Calabar (with the Cross
Akwayafe Qwa Rivers) and Rio del Rey Rivers. The whole of this
great stretch of coast is a mangrove-swamp, each river silently
rolling down its great mass of mud-laden waters and constituting
each in itself a very pretty problem to the navigator by its network
of intercommunicating creeks, and the sand and mud bar which it
forms off its entrance by dropping its heaviest mud; its lighter mud
is carried out beyond its bar and makes the nasty-smelling brown
soup of the South Atlantic Ocean, with froth floating in lines and
patches on it, for miles to seaward.
In this great region of swamps every mile appears like every other
mile until you get well used to it, and are able to distinguish the
little local peculiarities at the entrance of the rivers and in the
winding of the creeks, a thing difficult even for the most
experienced navigator to do during those thick wool-like mists
called smokes, which hang about the whole Bight from November till
May (the dry season), sometimes lasting all day, sometimes clearing
off three hours after sunrise.
The upper or north-westerly part of the swamp is round the mouths of
the Niger, and it successfully concealed this fact from geographers
down to 1830, when the series of heroic journeys made by Mungo Park,
Clapperton, and the two Landers finally solved the problem--a
problem that was as great and which cost more men's lives than even
the discovery of the sources of the Nile.
That this should have been so may seem very strange to us who now
have been told the answer to the riddle; for the upper waters of
this great river were known of before Christ and spoken of by
Herodotus, Pliny and Ptolemy, and its mouths navigated continuously
along by the seaboard by trading vessels since the fifteenth
century, but they were not recognised as belonging to the Niger.
Some geographers held that the Senegal or the Gambia was its
outfall; others that it was the Zaire (Congo); others that it did
not come out on the West Coast at all, but got mixed up with the
Nile in the middle of the continent, and so on. Yet when you come
to know the swamps this is not so strange. You find on going up
what looks like a big river--say Forcados, two and a half miles wide
at the entrance and a real bit of the Niger. Before you are up it
far great, broad, business-like-looking river entrances open on
either side, showing wide rivers mangrove-walled, but two-thirds of
them are utter frauds which will ground you within half an hour of
your entering them. Some few of them do communicate with other main
channels to the great upper river, and others are main channels
themselves; but most of them intercommunicate with each other and
lead nowhere in particular, and you can't even get there because of
their shallowness. It is small wonder that the earlier navigators
did not get far up them in sailing ships, and that the problem had
to be solved by men descending the main stream of the Niger before
it commences to what we in Devonshire should call "squander itself
about" in all these channels. And in addition it must be remembered
that the natives with whom these trading vessels dealt, first for
slaves, afterwards for palm-oil, were not, and are not now, members
of the Lo family of savages. Far from it: they do not go in for
"gentle smiles," but for murdering any unprotected boat's crew they
happen to come across, not only for a love of sport but to keep
white traders from penetrating to the trade-producing interior, and
spoiling prices. And the region is practically foodless.
The rivers of the great mangrove-swamp from the Sombreiro to the Rio
del Rey are now known pretty surely not to be branches of the Niger,
but the upper regions of this part of the Bight are much neglected
by English explorers. I believe the great swamp region of the Bight
of Biafra is the greatest in the world, and that in its immensity
and gloom it has a grandeur equal to that of the Himalayas.
Take any man, educated or not, and place him on Bonny or Forcados
River in the wet season on a Sunday--Bonny for choice. Forcados is
good. You'll keep Forcados scenery "indelibly limned on the tablets
of your mind when a yesterday has faded from its page," after you
have spent even a week waiting for the Lagos branch-boat on its inky
waters. But Bonny! Well, come inside the bar and anchor off the
factories: seaward there is the foam of the bar gleaming and wicked
white against a leaden sky and what there is left of Breaker Island.
In every other direction you will see the apparently endless walls
of mangrove, unvarying in colour, unvarying in form, unvarying in
height, save from perspective. Beneath and between you and them lie
the rotting mud waters of Bonny River, and away up and down river,
miles of rotting mud waters fringed with walls of rotting mud
mangrove-swamp. The only break in them--one can hardly call it a
relief to the scenery--are the gaunt black ribs of the old hulks,
once used as trading stations, which lie exposed at low water near
the shore, protruding like the skeletons of great unclean beasts who
have died because Bonny water was too strong even for them.
Raised on piles from the mud shore you will see the white-painted
factories and their great store-houses for oil; each factory likely
enough with its flag at half-mast, which does not enliven the
scenery either, for you know it is because somebody is "dead again."
Throughout and over all is the torrential downpour of the wet-season
rain, coming down night and day with its dull roar. I have known it
rain six mortal weeks in Bonny River, just for all the world as if
it were done by machinery, and the interval that came then was only
a few wet days, where-after it settled itself down to work again in
the good West Coast waterspout pour for more weeks.
While your eyes are drinking in the characteristics of Bonny scenery
you notice a peculiar smell--an intensification of that smell you
noticed when nearing Bonny, in the evening, out at sea. That's the
breath of the malarial mud, laden with fever, and the chances are
you will be down to-morrow. If it is near evening time now, you can
watch it becoming incarnate, creeping and crawling and gliding out
from the side creeks and between the mangrove-roots, laying itself
upon the river, stretching and rolling in a kind of grim play, and
finally crawling up the side of the ship to come on board and leave
its cloak of moisture that grows green mildew in a few hours over
all. Noise you will not be much troubled with: there is only that
rain, a sound I have known make men who are sick with fever well-
nigh mad, and now and again the depressing cry of the curlews which
abound here. This combination is such that after six or eight hours
of it you will be thankful to hear your shipmates start to work the
winch. I take it you are hard up when you relish a winch. And you
will say--let your previous experience of the world be what it may--
Good Heavens, what a place!
Five times have I been now in Bonny River and I like it. You always
do get to like it if you live long enough to allow the strange
fascination of the place to get a hold on you; but when I first
entered it, on a ship commanded by Captain Murray in '93, in the wet
season, i.e. in August, in spite of the confidence I had by this
time acquired in his skill and knowledge of the West Coast, a sense
of horror seized on me as I gazed upon the scene, and I said to the
old Coaster who then had charge of my education, "Good Heavens! what
an awful accident. We've gone and picked up the Styx." He was
evidently hurt and said, "Bonny was a nice place when you got used
to it," and went on to discourse on the last epidemic here, when
nine men out of the resident eleven died in about ten days from
yellow fever. Next to the scenery of "a River," commend me for
cheerfulness to the local conversation of its mangrove-swamp region;
and every truly important West African river has its mangrove-swamp
belt, which extends inland as far as the tide waters make it
brackish, and which has a depth and extent from the banks depending
on the configuration of the country. Above this belt comes
uniformly a region of high forest, having towards the river frontage
clay cliffs, sometimes high, as in the case of the Old Calabar at
Adiabo, more frequently dwarf cliffs, as in the Forcados up at
Warree, and in the Ogowe,--for a long stretch through Kama country.
After the clay cliffs region you come to a region of rapids, caused
by the river cutting its way through a mountain range; such ranges
are the Pallaballa, causing the Livingstone rapids of the Congo; the
Sierra del Cristal, those of the Ogowe, and many lesser rivers; the
Rumby and Omon ranges, those of the Old Calabar and Cross Rivers.
Naturally in different parts these separate regions vary in size.
The mangrove-swamp may be only a fringe at the mouth of the river,
or it may cover hundreds of square miles. The clay cliffs may
extend for only a mile or so along the bank, or they may, as on the
Ogowe, extend for 130. And so it is also with the rapids: in some
rivers, for instance the Cameroons, there are only a few miles of
them, in others there are many miles; in the Ogowe there are as many
as 500; and these rapids may be close to the river mouth, as in most
of the Gold Coast rivers, save the Ancobra and the Volta; or they
may be far in the interior, as in the Cross River, where they
commence at about 200 miles; and on the Ogowe, where they commence
at about 208 miles from the sea coast; this depends on the nearness
or remoteness from the coast line of the mountain ranges which run
down the west side of the continent; ranges (apparently of very
different geological formations), which have no end of different
names, but about which little is known in detail. {80}
And now we will leave generalisations on West African rivers and go
into particulars regarding one little known in England, and called
by its owners, the French, the greatest strictly equatorial river in
the world--the Ogowe.
CHAPTER IV. THE OGOWE.
Wherein the voyager gives extracts from the Log of the Move and of
the Eclaireur, and an account of the voyager's first meeting with
"those fearful Fans," also an awful warning to all young persons who
neglect the study of the French language.
On the 20th of May I reached Gaboon, now called Libreville--the
capital of Congo Francais, and, thanks to the kindness of Mr.
Hudson, I was allowed a passage on a small steamer then running from
Gaboon to the Ogowe River, and up it when necessary as far as
navigation by steamer is possible--this steamer is, I deeply regret
to say, now no more. As experiences of this kind contain such
miscellaneous masses of facts, I am forced to commit the literary
crime of giving you my Ogowe set of experiences in the form of
diary.
June 5th, 1895.--Off on Move at 9.30. Passengers, Mr. Hudson, Mr.
Woods, Mr. Huyghens, Pere Steinitz, and I. There are black deck-
passengers galore; I do not know their honourable names, but they
are evidently very much married men, for there is quite a gorgeously
coloured little crowd of ladies to see them off. They salute me as
I pass down the pier, and start inquiries. I say hastily to them:
"Farewell, I'm off up river," for I notice Mr. Fildes bearing down
on me, and I don't want him to drop in on the subject of society
interest. I expect it is settled now, or pretty nearly. There is a
considerable amount of mild uproar among the black contingent, and
the Move firmly clears off before half the good advice and good
wishes for the black husbands are aboard. She is a fine little
vessel; far finer than I expected. The accommodation I am getting
is excellent. A long, narrow cabin, with one bunk in it and pretty
nearly everything one can wish for, and a copying press thrown in.
Food is excellent, society charming, captain and engineer quite
acquisitions. The saloon is square and roomy for the size of the
vessel, and most things, from rowlocks to teapots, are kept under
the seats in good nautical style. We call at the guard-ship to pass
our papers, and then steam ahead out of the Gaboon estuary to the
south, round Pongara Point, keeping close into the land. About
forty feet from shore there is a good free channel for vessels with
a light draught which if you do not take, you have to make a big
sweep seaward to avoid a reef. Between four and five miles below
Pongara, we pass Point Gombi, which is fitted with a lighthouse, a
lively and conspicuous structure by day as well as night. It is
perched on a knoll, close to the extremity of the long arm of low,
sandy ground, and is painted black and white, in horizontal bands,
which, in conjunction with its general figure, give it a pagoda-like
appearance.
Alongside it are a white-painted, red-roofed house for the
lighthouse keeper, and a store for its oil. The light is either a
flashing or a revolving or a stationary one, when it is alight. One
must be accurate about these things, and my knowledge regarding it
is from information received, and amounts to the above. I cannot
throw in any personal experience, because I have never passed it at
night-time, and seen from Glass it seems just steady. Most
lighthouses on this Coast give up fancy tricks, like flashing or
revolving, pretty soon after they are established. Seventy-five per
cent. of them are not alight half the time at all. "It's the
climate." Gombi, however, you may depend on for being alight at
night, and I have no hesitation in saying you can see it, when it is
visible, seventeen miles out to sea, and that the knoll on which the
lighthouse stands is a grass-covered sand cliff, about forty or
fifty feet above sea-level. As we pass round Gombi point, the
weather becomes distinctly rough, particularly at lunch-time. The
Move minds it less than her passengers, and stamps steadily along
past the wooded shore, behind which shows a distant range of blue
hills. Silence falls upon the black passengers, who assume
recumbent positions on the deck, and suffer. All the things from
under the saloon seats come out and dance together, and play puss-
in-the-corner, after the fashion of loose gear when there is any sea
on. As the night comes down, the scene becomes more and more
picturesque. The moonlit sea, shimmering and breaking on the
darkened shore, the black forest and the hills silhouetted against
the star-powdered purple sky, and, at my feet, the engine-room
stoke-hole, lit with the rose-coloured glow from its furnace,
showing by the great wood fire the two nearly naked Krumen stokers,
shining like polished bronze in their perspiration, as they throw in
on to the fire the billets of red wood that look like freshly-cut
chunks of flesh. The white engineer hovers round the mouth of the
pit, shouting down directions and ever and anon plunging down the
little iron ladder to carry them out himself. At intervals he
stands on the rail with his head craned round the edge of the sun
deck to listen to the captain, who is up on the little deck above,
for there is no telegraph to the engines, and our gallant
commander's voice is not strong. While the white engineer is
roosting on the rail, the black engineer comes partially up the
ladder and gazes hard at me; so I give him a wad of tobacco, and he
plainly regards me as inspired, for of course that was what he
wanted. Remember that whenever you see a man, black or white,
filled with a nameless longing, it is tobacco he requires. Grim
despair accompanied by a gusty temper indicates something wrong with
his pipe, in which case offer him a straightened-out hairpin. The
black engineer having got his tobacco, goes below to the stoke-hole
again and smokes a short clay as black and as strong as himself.
The captain affects an immense churchwarden. How he gets through
life, waving it about as he does, without smashing it every two
minutes, I cannot make out.
At last we anchor for the night just inside Nazareth Bay, for
Nazareth Bay wants daylight to deal with, being rich in low islands
and sand shoals. We crossed the Equator this afternoon.
June 6th.--Off at daybreak into Nazareth Bay. Anxiety displayed by
navigators, sounding taken on both sides of the bows with long
bamboo poles painted in stripes, and we go "slow ahead" and "hard
astern" successfully, until we get round a good-sized island, and
there we stick until four o'clock, high water, when we come off all
right, and steam triumphantly but cautiously into the Ogowe. The
shores of Nazareth Bay are fringed with mangroves, but once in the
river the scenery soon changes, and the waters are walled on either
side with a forest rich in bamboo, oil and wine-palms. These forest
cliffs seem to rise right up out of the mirror-like brown water.
Many of the highest trees are covered with clusters of brown-pink
young shoots that look like flowers, and others are decorated by my
old enemy the climbing palm, now bearing clusters of bright crimson
berries. Climbing plants of other kinds are wreathing everything,
some blossoming with mauve, some with yellow, some with white
flowers, and every now and then a soft sweet heavy breath of
fragrance comes out to us as we pass by. There is a native village
on the north bank, embowered along its plantations with some very
tall cocoa-palms rising high above them.
The river winds so that it seems to close in behind us, opening out
in front fresh vistas of superb forest beauty, with the great brown
river stretching away unbroken ahead like a broad road of burnished
bronze. Astern, it has a streak of frosted silver let into it by
the Move's screw. Just about six o'clock, we run up to the Fallaba,
the Move's predecessor in working the Ogowe, now a hulk, used as a
depot by Hatton and Cookson. She is anchored at the entrance of a
creek that runs through to the Fernan Vaz; some say it is six hours'
run, others that it is eight hours for a canoe; all agree that there
are plenty of mosquitoes.
The Fallaba looks grimly picturesque, and about the last spot in
which a person of a nervous disposition would care to spend the
night. One half of her deck is dedicated to fuel logs, on the other
half are plank stores for the goods, and a room for the black sub-
trader in charge of them. I know that there must be scorpions which
come out of those logs and stroll into the living room, and goodness
only knows what one might not fancy would come up the creek or rise
out of the floating grass, or the limitless-looking forest. I am
told she was a fine steamer in her day, but those who had charge of
her did not make allowances for the very rapid rotting action of the
Ogowe water, so her hull rusted through before her engines were a
quarter worn out; and there was nothing to be done with her then,
but put a lot of concrete in, and make her a depot, in which state
of life she is very useful, for during the height of the dry season,
the Move cannot get through the creek to supply the firm's Fernan
Vaz factories.
Subsequently I heard much of the Fallaba, which seems to have been a
celebrated, or rather notorious, vessel. Every one declared her
engines to have been of immense power, but this I believe to have
been a mere local superstition; because in the same breath, the man
who referred to them, as if it would have been quite unnecessary for
new engines to have been made for H.M.S. Victorious if those
Fallaba engines could have been sent to Chatham dockyard, would
mention that "you could not get any pace up on her"; and all who
knew her sadly owned "she wouldn't steer," so naturally she spent
the greater part of her time on the Ogowe on a sand-bank, or in the
bush. All West African steamers have a mania for bush, and the
delusion that they are required to climb trees. The Fallaba had the
complaint severely, because of her defective steering powers, and
the temptation the magnificent forest, and the rapid currents, and
the sharp turns of the creek district, offered her; she failed, of
course--they all fail--but it is not for want of practice. I have
seen many West Coast vessels up trees, but never more than fifteen
feet or so.
The trade of this lower part of the Ogowe, from the mouth to
Lembarene, a matter of 130 miles, is almost nil. Above Lembarene,
you are in touch with the rubber and ivory trade.
This Fallaba creek is noted for mosquitoes, and the black passengers
made great and showy preparations in the evening time to receive
their onslaught, by tying up their strong chintz mosquito bars to
the stanchions and the cook-house. Their arrangements being
constantly interrupted by the white engineer making alarums and
excursions amongst them; because when too many of them get on one
side the Move takes a list and burns her boilers. Conversation and
atmosphere are full of mosquitoes. The decision of widely
experienced sufferers amongst us is, that next to the lower Ogowe,
New Orleans is the worst place for them in this world.
The day closed with a magnificent dramatic beauty. Dead ahead of
us, up through a bank of dun-coloured mist rose the moon, a great
orb of crimson, spreading down the oil-like, still river, a streak
of blood-red reflection. Right astern, the sun sank down into the
mist, a vaster orb of crimson, and when he had gone out of view,
sent up flushes of amethyst, gold, carmine and serpent-green, before
he left the moon in undisputed possession of the black purple sky.
Forest and river were absolutely silent, but there was a pleasant
chatter and laughter from the black crew and passengers away
forward, that made the Move seem an island of life in a land of
death. I retired into my cabin, so as to get under the mosquito
curtains to write; and one by one I heard my companions come into
the saloon adjacent, and say to the watchman: "You sabe six
o'clock? When them long arm catch them place, and them short arm
catch them place, you call me in the morning time." Exit from
saloon--silence--then: "You sabe five o'clock? When them long arm
catch them place, and them short arm catch them place, you call me
in the morning time." Exit--silence--then: "You sabe half-past
five o'clock? When them long arm--" Oh, if I were a watchman!
Anyhow, that five o'clocker will have the whole ship's company
roused in the morning time.
June 7th.--Every one called in the morning time by the reflex row
from the rousing of the five o'clocker. Glorious morning. The
scene the reversal of that of last night. The forest to the east
shows a deep blue-purple, mounted on a background that changes as
you watch it from daffodil and amethyst to rose-pink, as the sun
comes up through the night mists. The moon sinks down among them,
her pale face flushing crimson as she goes; and the yellow-gold
sunshine comes, glorifying the forest and gilding the great sweep of
tufted papyrus growing alongside the bank; and the mist vanishes,
little white flecks of it lingering among the water reeds and lying
in the dark shadows of the forest stems. The air is full of the
long, soft, rich notes of the plantain warblers, and the uproar
consequent upon the Move taking on fuel wood, which comes alongside
in canoe loads from the Fallaba.
Pere Steinitz and Mr. Woods are busy preparing their respective
canoes for their run to Fernan Vaz through the creek. Their canoes
are very fine ones, with a remarkably clean run aft. The Pere's is
quite the travelling canoe, with a little stage of bamboo aft,
covered with a hood of palm thatch, under which you can make
yourself quite comfortable, and keep yourself and your possessions
dry, unless something desperate comes on in the way of rain.
By 10.25 we have got all our wood aboard, and run off up river full
speed. The river seems broader above the Fallaba, but this is
mainly on account of its being temporarily unencumbered with
islands. A good deal of the bank we have passed by since leaving
Nazareth Bay on the south side has been island shore, with a channel
between the islands and the true south bank.
The day soon grew dull, and looked threatening, after the delusive
manner of the dry season. The climbing plants are finer here than I
have ever before seen them. They form great veils and curtains
between and over the trees, often hanging so straight and flat, in
stretches of twenty to forty feet or so wide, and thirty to sixty or
seventy feet high, that it seems incredible that no human hand has
trained or clipped them into their perfect forms. Sometimes these
curtains are decorated with large bell-shaped, bright-coloured
flowers, sometimes with delicate sprays of white blossoms. This
forest is beyond all my expectations of tropical luxuriance and
beauty, and it is a thing of another world to the forest of the
Upper Calabar, which, beautiful as it is, is a sad dowdy to this.
There you certainly get a great sense of grimness and vastness; here
you have an equal grimness and vastness with the addition of superb
colour. This forest is a Cleopatra to which Calabar is but a
Quaker. Not only does this forest depend on flowers for its
illumination, for there are many kinds of trees having their young
shoots, crimson, brown-pink, and creamy yellow: added to this there
is also the relieving aspect of the prevailing fashion among West
African trees, of wearing the trunk white with here and there upon
it splashes of pale pink lichen, and vermilion-red fungus, which
alone is sufficient to prevent the great mass of vegetation from
being a monotony in green.
All day long we steam past ever-varying scenes of loveliness whose
component parts are ever the same, yet the effect ever different.
Doubtless it is wrong to call it a symphony, yet I know no other
word to describe the scenery of the Ogowe. It is as full of life
and beauty and passion as any symphony Beethoven ever wrote: the
parts changing, interweaving, and returning. There are leit motifs
here in it, too. See the papyrus ahead; and you know when you get
abreast of it you will find the great forest sweeping away in a bay-
like curve behind it against the dull gray sky, the splendid columns
of its cotton and red woods looking like a facade of some limitless
inchoate temple. Then again there is that stretch of sword-grass,
looking as if it grew firmly on to the bottom, so steady does it
stand; but as the Move goes by, her wash sets it undulating in waves
across its broad acres of extent, showing it is only riding at
anchor; and you know after a grass patch you will soon see a red
dwarf clay cliff, with a village perched on its top, and the
inhabitants thereof in their blue and red cloths standing by to
shout and wave to the Move, or legging it like lamp-lighters from
the back streets and the plantation to the river frontage, to be in
time to do so, and through all these changing phases there is always
the strain of the vast wild forest, and the swift, deep, silent
river.
At almost every village that we pass--and they are frequent after
the Fallaba--there is an ostentatious display of firewood deposited
either on the bank, or on piles driven into the mud in front of it,
mutely saying in their uncivilised way, "Try our noted chunks: best
value for money"--(that is to say, tobacco, etc.), to the Move or
any other little steamer that may happen to come along hungry for
fuel.
We stayed a few minutes this afternoon at Ashchyouka, where there
came off to us in a canoe an enterprising young Frenchman who has
planted and tended a coffee plantation in this out-of-the-way
region, and which is now, I am glad to hear, just coming into
bearing. After leaving Ashchyouka, high land showed to the N.E.,
and at 5.15, without evident cause to the uninitiated, the Move took
to whistling like a liner. A few minutes later a factory shows up
on the hilly north bank, which is Woermann's; then just beyond and
behind it we see the Government Post; then Hatton and Cookson's
factory, all in a line. Opposite Hatton and Cookson's there was a
pretty little stern-wheel steamer nestling against the steep clay
bank of Lembarene Island when we come in sight, but she instantly
swept out from it in a perfect curve, which lay behind her marked in
frosted silver on the water as she dropt down river. I hear now she
was the Eclaireur, the stern-wheeler which runs up and down the
Ogowe in connection with the Chargeurs Reunis Company, subsidised by
the Government, and when the Move whistled, she was just completing
taking on 3,000 billets of wood for fuel. She comes up from the
Cape (Lopez) stoking half wood and half coal as far as Njole and
back to Lembarene; from Lembarene to the sea downwards she does on
wood. In a few minutes we have taken her berth close to the bank,
and tied up to a tree. The white engineer yells to the black
engineer "Tom-Tom: Haul out some of them fire and open them drains
one time," and the stokers, with hooks, pull out the glowing logs on
to the iron deck in front of the furnace door, and throw water over
them, and the Move sends a cloud of oil-laden steam against the
bank, coming perilously near scalding some of her black admirers
assembled there. I dare say she felt vicious because they had been
admiring the Eclaireur.
After a few minutes, I am escorted on to the broad verandah of
Hatton and Cookson's factory, and I sit down under a lamp, prepared
to contemplate, until dinner time, the wild beauty of the scene.
This idea does not get carried out; in the twinkling of an eye I am
stung all round the neck, and recognise there are lots too many
mosquitoes and sandflies in the scenery to permit of contemplation
of any kind. Never have I seen sandflies and mosquitoes in such
appalling quantities. With a wild ping of joy the latter made for
me, and I retired promptly into a dark corner of the verandah,
swearing horribly, but internally, and fought them. Mr. Hudson,
Agent-general, and Mr. Cockshut, Agent for the Ogowe, walk up and
down the beach in front, doubtless talking cargo, apparently
unconscious of mosquitoes; but by and by, while we are having
dinner, they get their share. I behave exquisitely, and am quite
lost in admiration of my own conduct, and busily deciding in my own
mind whether I shall wear one of those plain ring haloes, or a solid
plate one, a la Cimabue, when Mr. Hudson says in a voice full of
reproach to Mr. Cockshut, "You have got mosquitoes here, Mr.
Cockshut." Poor Mr. Cockshut doesn't deny it; he has got four on
his forehead and his hands are sprinkled with them, but he says:
"There are none at Njole," which we all feel is an absurdly lame
excuse, for Njole is some ninety miles above Lembarene, where we now
are. Mr. Hudson says this to him, tersely, and feeling he has
utterly crushed Mr. Cockshut, turns on me, and utterly failing to
recognise me as a suffering saint, says point blank and savagely,
"You don't seem to feel these things, Miss Kingsley." Not feel
them, indeed! Why, I could cry over them. Well! that's all the
thanks one gets for trying not to be a nuisance in this world.
After dinner I go back on to the Move for the night, for it is too
late to go round to Kangwe and ask Mme. Jacot, of the Mission
Evangelique, if she will take me in. The air is stiff with
mosquitoes, and saying a few suitable words to them, I dash under
the mosquito bar and sleep, lulled by their shrill yells of baffled
rage.
June 8th.--In the morning, up at five. Great activity on beach.
Move synchronously taking on wood fuel and discharging cargo. A
very active young French pastor from the Kangwe mission station is
round after the mission's cargo. Mr. Hudson kindly makes inquiries
as to whether I may go round to Kangwe and stay with Mme. Jacot. He
says: "Oh, yes," but as I find he is not M. Jacot, I do not feel
justified in accepting this statement without its having personal
confirmation from Mme. Jacot, and so, leaving my luggage with the
Move, I get them to allow me to go round with him and his cargo to
Kangwe, about three-quarters of an hour's paddle round the upper
part of Lembarene Island, and down the broad channel on the other
side of it. Kangwe is beautifully situated on a hill, as its name
denotes, on the mainland and north bank of the river. Mme. Jacot
most kindly says I may come, though I know I shall be a fearful
nuisance, for there is no room for me save M. Jacot's beautifully
neat, clean, tidy study. I go back in the canoe and fetch my
luggage from the Move; and say good-bye to Mr. Hudson, who gave me
an immense amount of valuable advice about things, which was
subsequently of great use to me, and a lot of equally good warnings
which, if I had attended to, would have enabled me to avoid many, if
not all, my misadventures in Congo Francais.
I camped out that night in M. Jacot's study, wondering how he would
like it when he came home and found me there; for he was now away on
one of his usual evangelising tours. Providentially Mme. Jacot let
me have the room that the girls belonging to the mission school
usually slept in, to my great relief, before M. Jacot came home.
I will not weary you with my diary during my first stay at Kangwe.
It is a catalogue of the collection of fish, etc., that I made, and
a record of the continuous, never-failing kindness and help that I
received from M. and Mme. Jacot, and of my attempts to learn from
them the peculiarities of the region, the natives, and their
language and customs, which they both know so well and manage so
admirably. I daily saw there what it is possible to do, even in the
wildest and most remote regions of West Africa, and recognised that
there is still one heroic form of human being whose praise has never
adequately been sung, namely, the missionary's wife.
Wishing 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.
June 22nd.--Eclaireur, 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.
The passengers consist of Mr. Cockshut, going up river to see after
the sub-factories; a French official bound for Franceville, which it
will 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 live on but
manioc, a diet it would be far easier to die on under the
circumstances. He is excellent company; though I do not know a word
he says, he is perpetually giving 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 clashing them forward with
a descriptive ejaculation of "Whish, flash, bum, bum, bump," and
then comes what evidently represents a terrific fight for life
against terrific odds. Wish to goodness I knew French, for wishing
to see these rapids, I cannot help feeling anxious and worried at
not fully understanding this dramatic entertainment regarding them.
There is another passenger, said to be the engineer's brother, a
quiet, gentlemanly man. Captain argues violently with every one;
with Mr. Cockshut on the subject of the wicked waste of money in
keeping the Move and not shipping all goods by the Eclaireur,
"N'est-ce pas?" and with the French official on goodness knows what,
but I fancy it will be pistols for two and coffee for one in the
morning time. When the captain feels himself being worsted in
argument, he shouts for support to the engineer and his brother.
"N'est-ce pas?" he says, turning furiously to them. "Oui, oui,
certainement," they say dutifully and calmly, and then he, refreshed
by their support, dashes back to his controversial fray. He even
tries to get up a row 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 British and African Company's steamers. I
cannot stand this, for I know my esteemed and honoured friends the
Calabar traders would ship by the Flying Dutchman or the Devil
himself if either of them would take the stuff at 15 shillings the
ton. We have, however, to leave off this row for want of language,
to our mutual regret, for it would have been a love of a fight.
Soon after leaving Lembarene Island, we pass the mouth of the chief
southern affluent of the Ogowe, the Ngunie; it flows 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 flows through a mountainous country, 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 Eclaireur
two days steaming from the mouth of the Ngunie to Samba, when she
can get up; but now, in the height of the long dry season neither
she nor the Move can go because of the sandbanks; 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 ivory, a trade worked by the Akele tribe, a powerful, 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 wonderful
journeys among them. While I was at Lembarene, waiting for the
Eclaireur, a notorious chief descended on a Ngunie sub-factory, and
looted it. The wife of the black trading agent made a gallant
resistance, her husband was away on a trading expedition, but the
chief had her seized and beaten, and thrown into the river. An
appeal was made to the Doctor then Administrator of the Ogowe, a
powerful and helpful official, and he soon came up with the little
canoniere, taking Mr. Cockshut with him and fully vindicated the
honour of the French flag, under which all factories here are.
The banks of the Ogowe just above Lembarene Island are low; with the
forest only broken by village clearings and seeming to press in on
those, ready to absorb them should the inhabitants cease their war
against it. The blue Ntyankala mountains of Achango land show away
to the E.S.E. in a range. Behind us, gradually sinking in the
distance, is the high land on Lembarene Island.
Soon we run up alongside a big street of a village with four high
houses rising a story above the rest, which are strictly ground
floor; it has also five or six little low open thatched huts along
the street in front. {96} These may be fetish huts, or, as the
captain of the Sparrow would say, "again they mayn't." For I have
seen similar huts in the villages round Libreville, which were store
places for roof mats, of which the natives carefully keep a store
dry and ready for emergencies in the way of tornadoes, or to sell.
We stop abreast of this village. Inhabitants in scores rush out and
form an excited row along the vertical bank edge, several of the
more excited individuals falling over it into the water.
Yells from our passengers on the lower deck. Yells from inhabitants
on shore. Yells of vite, vite from the Captain. Dogs bark, horns
bray, some exhilarated individual thumps the village drum, canoes
fly out from the bank towards us. Fearful scrimmage heard going on
all the time on the deck below. As soon as the canoes are
alongside, our passengers from the lower deck, with their bundles
and their dogs, pour over 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 who have gone
ashore have been away on hire to the government 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 below 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," etc., etc. While all this is going on, the Eclaireur quietly
slides down river, with the current, broadside on as if she smelt
her stable at Lembarene. This I find is her constant habit whenever
the captain, the engineer, and the man at the wheel are all busy in
a row along the rail, shouting overside, 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
river again at full speed.
We go on up stream; now 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. Woermann's, in charge of which is
a white man, the only white man between Lembarene and Njole. He
comes on board and looks only a boy, but is really aged twenty. He
is a Frenchman, and was at Hatton and Cookson's first, then he
joined Woermann's, who have put him in charge of this place. The
isolation for a white man must be terrible; sometimes two months
will go by without his seeing another white face but that in his
looking-glass, and when he does see another, it is only by a
fleeting visit such as we now pay him, and to make the most of this,
he stays on board to dinner.
June 23rd.--Start off steaming up river early in the morning time.
Land ahead showing mountainous. Rather suddenly the banks grow
higher. Here and there in the forest are patches which look like
regular hand-made plantations, which they are not, but only patches
of egombie-gombie trees, showing that at this place was once a
native town. Whenever land is cleared along here, this tree springs
up all over the ground. It grows very rapidly, and has great leaves
something like a sycamore leaf, only much larger. These leaves
growing in a cluster at the top of the straight stem give an
umbrella-like appearance to the affair; so the natives call them and
an umbrella by the same name, but whether they think the umbrella is
like the tree or the tree is like the umbrella, I can't make out. I
am always getting myself mixed over this kind of thing in my
attempts "to contemplate phenomena from a scientific standpoint," as
Cambridge ordered me to do. I'll give the habit up. "You can't do
that sort of thing out here--It's the climate," and I will content
myself with stating the fact, that when a native comes into a store
and wants an umbrella, he asks for an egombie-gombie.
The uniformity of the height of the individual trees in one of these
patches is striking, and it arises from their all starting fair. I
cannot make out other things about them to my satisfaction, for you
very rarely see one of them in the wild bush, and then it does not
bear a fruit that the natives collect and use, and then chuck away
the stones round their domicile. Anyhow, there they are all one
height, and all one colour, and apparently allowing no other
vegetation to make any headway among them. But I found when I
carefully investigated egombie-gombie patches that there were a few
of the great, slower-growing forest trees coming up amongst them,
and in time when these attain a sufficient height, their shade kills
off the egombie-gombie, and the patch goes back into the great
forest from which it came. The frequency of these patches arises
from the nomadic habits of the chief tribe in these regions, the
Fans. They rarely occupy one site for a village for any
considerable time on account--firstly, of their wasteful method of
collecting rubber by cutting down the vine, which soon stamps it out
of a district; and, secondly, from their quarrelsome ways. So when
a village of Fans has cleared all the rubber out of its district, or
has made the said district too hot to hold it by rows with other
villages, or has got itself very properly shelled out and burnt for
some attack on traders or the French flag in any form, its
inhabitants clear off into another district, and build another
village; for bark and palm thatch are cheap, and house removing just
nothing; when you are an unsophisticated cannibal Fan you don't
require a pantechnicon van to stow away your one or two mushroom-
shaped stools, knives, and cooking-pots, and a calabash or so. If
you are rich, maybe you will have a box with clothes in as well, but
as a general rule all your clothes are on your back. So your wives
just pick up the stools and the knives and the cooking-pots, and the
box, and the children toddle off with the calabashes. You have, of
course, the gun to carry, for sleeping or waking a Fan never parts
with his gun, and so there you are "finish," as M. Pichault would
say, and before your new bark house is up, there grows the egombie-
gombie, where your house once stood. Now and again, for lack of
immediate neighbouring villages to quarrel with, one end of a
village will quarrel with the other end. The weaker end then goes
off and builds itself another village, keeping an eye lifting for
any member of the stronger end who may come conveniently into its
neighbourhood to be killed and eaten. Meanwhile, the egombie-gombie
grows over the houses of the empty end, pretending it's a plantation
belonging to the remaining half. I once heard a new-comer hold
forth eloquently as to how those Fans were maligned. "They say,"
said he, with a fine wave of his arm towards such a patch, "that
these people do not till the soil--that they are not industrious--
that the few plantations they do make are ill-kept--that they are
only a set of wandering hunters and cannibals. Look there at those
magnificent plantations!" I did look, but I did not alter my
opinion of the Fans, for I know my old friend egombie-gombie when I
see him.
This morning the French official seems sad and melancholy. I fancy
he has got a Monday head (Kipling), but he revives as the day goes
on. As we go on, the banks become hills and the broad river, which
has been showing sheets of sandbanks in all directions, now narrows
and shows only neat little beaches of white sand in shallow places
along the bank. The current is terrific. The Eclaireur breathes
hard, and has all she can do to fight her way up against it. Masses
of black weathered rock in great boulders show along the exposed
parts of both banks, left dry by the falling waters. Each bank is
steep, and quantities of great trees, naked and bare, are hanging
down from them, held by their roots and bush-rope entanglement from
being swept away with the rushing current, and they make a great
white fringe to the banks. The hills become higher and higher, and
more and more abrupt, and the river runs between them in a gloomy
ravine, winding to and fro; we catch sight of a patch of white sand
ahead, which I mistake for a white painted house, but immediately
after doubling round a bend we see the houses of the Talagouga
Mission Station. The Eclaireur forthwith has an hysteric fit on her
whistle, so as to frighten M. Forget and get him to dash off in his
canoe to her at once. Apparently he knows her, and does not hurry,
but comes on board quietly. I find there will be no place for me to
stay at at Njole, so I decide to go on in the Eclaireur and use her
as an hotel while there, and then return and stay with Mme. Forget
if she will have me. I consult M. Forget on this point. He says,
"Oh, yes," but seems to have lost something of great value recently,
and not to be quite clear where. Only manner, I suppose. When M.
Forget has got his mails he goes, and the Eclaireur goes on; indeed,
she has never really stopped, for the water is too deep to anchor in
here, and the terrific current would promptly whisk the steamer down
out of Talagouga gorge were she to leave off fighting it. We run on
up past Talagouga Island, where the river broadens out again a
little, but not much, and reach Njole by nightfall, and tie up to a
tree by Dumas' factory beach. Usual uproar, but as Mr. Cockshut
says, no mosquitoes. The mosquito belt ends abruptly at
O'Soamokita.
Next morning I go ashore and start on a walk. Lovely 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 bushes planted in long rows. Certainly coffee is
one of the most lovely of crops. Its grandly shaped leaves are like
those of our medlar tree, only darker and richer green, the berries
set close to the stem, those that are ripe, a rich crimson; these
trees, I think, are about three years old, and just coming into
bearing; for they are covered with full-sized berries, and there has
been a flush of bloom on them this morning, and the delicious
fragrance of their stephanotis-shaped and scented flowers lingers in
the air. The country spreads before me a lovely valley encompassed
by purple-blue mountains. Mount Talagouga looks splendid in a soft,
infinitely deep blue, although it is quite close, just the other
side of the river. The road goes on into the valley, as pleasantly
as ever 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, etc. Clearly this is a jardin d'acclimatation. 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.
While contemplating these things, hear awful hiss. Serpents! No,
geese. Awful fight. Grand things, good, old-fashioned, long skirts
are for Africa! Get through geese and advance in good order, but
somewhat rapidly 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 strong, now in a northerly
direction, apparently indefinitely. Hope to goodness there will be
a turning that I can go down and get back by, without returning
through this 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 native with an awful knowledge of English, 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 gentleman, clad in a singlet and a
divided skirt. White people must be attended to, so advance
carefully towards him through a plantation of young coffee,
apologising humbly for intruding on his domain. He smiles and bows
beautifully, but--horror!--he knows no English, I no French.
Situation tres inexplicable et tres interessante, as I subsequently
heard him remark; and the worst of it is he is evidently bursting to
know who I am, and what I am doing in the middle of his coffee
plantation, for his it clearly is, as appears from his obsequious
bodyguard of blacks, highly interested in me also. We 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 intelligence first and
says, "Interpreter," waving his hand to the south. I say "Yes," in
my best Fan, an enthusiastic, intelligent grunt which any one 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 bamboo 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 all 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. Situation
terrible! My host and I smile wildly at each other, and both wonder
in our respective languages what, in the words of Mr. Squeers as
mentioned in the classics--we "shall do in this 'ere most awful go."
We are both going mad with the strain of the situation, when in
walks the engineer's brother from the Eclaireur. He seems intensely
surprised to find me sitting in his friend the planter's parlour
after my grim and retiring conduct on the Eclaireur on my voyage up.
But the planter tells him all, sousing him in torrents of words,
full of the violence of an outbreak of pent-up emotion. I do not
understand what he says, but I catch "tres inexplicable" and things
like that. The calm brother of the engineer sits down at the table,
and I 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, feeling
the mental atmosphere had become less tense and cooler. We both
simply beamed on our deliverer, and the planter gave him lots of
things to drink. I had nothing about me except a head of tobacco in
my pocket, which I did not feel was a suitable offering. Now the
engineer'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
magnificence of this plantation, and all the enterprise and energy
it represented.
"Oui, oui, certainement," said he, and translated. My friend the
planter seemed charmed; it was the first sign of anything
approaching reason he had seen in me. He wanted me to have eau
sucree more kindly than ever, and when I rose, intending to bow
myself off and go, geese or no geese, back to the Eclaireur, he
would not let me go. I must see the plantation, toute la
plantation. So presently all three of us go out and thoroughly do
the plantation, the most well-ordered, well-cultivated plantation I
have ever 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
grass which has been most wisely 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 coming into
bearing. The whole is kept as perfectly as a garden, amazing as the
work of one white man with only a staff of unskilled native
labourers--at present only eighty of them. The coffee planted is of
three kinds, the Elephant berry, the Arabian, and the San Thome.
During our inspection, we only had one serious misunderstanding,
which arose from my seeing for the first time in my life tree-ferns
growing in the Ogowe. There were three of them, evidently carefully
taken care of, among some coffee plants. It was highly exciting,
and I tried to find out about them. It seemed, even in this centre
of enterprise, unlikely that they had been brought just "for dandy"
from the Australasian region, and I had never yet come across them
in my wanderings save on Fernando 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. When 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 for 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
Administrator, and from there he says I can go on to the Eclaireur
from the Post beach, as she will be up there from Dumas'. Off we go
up the road which skirts the river bank, a dwarf clay cliff,
overgrown with vegetation, save where it is cleared for beaches.
The road is short, but exceedingly pretty; on the other side from
the river is a steep bank on which is growing a plantation of cacao.
Lying out in the centre of the river you see Njole Island, a low,
sandy one, timbered not only with bush, but with orange and other
fruit trees; for formerly the Post and factories used to be situated
on the island--now only their trees remain for various reasons, one
being that in the wet season it is a good deal under water.
Everything is now situated on the mainland north bank, in a
straggling but picturesque line; first comes Woermann's factory,
then Hatton and Cookson's, and John Holt's, close together with a
beach in common in a sweetly amicable style for factories, who as a
rule firmly stockade themselves off from their next door neighbours.
Then Dumas' beach, a little native village, the cacao patch and the
Post at the up river end of things European, an end of things
European, I am told, for a matter of 500 miles. Immediately beyond
the 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 enthusiasm, all manner of things--big gorilla teeth and
heads, native spears and brass-nail-ornamented guns; and explains,
while 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 headmen from Samba busily quarrying a clay cliff behind it so as
to enlarge the governmental plateau, and the ex-ministers of the ex-
King of Dahomey, who are deported to Njole, and 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 will be conversationally 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 his
beautiful white clothes. I said they would, but men will be men.
Then we go and stand under the two lovely odeaka trees that make a
triumphal-arch-like gateway to the Post's beach from the river, and
the Doctor discourses in a most interesting way on all sorts of
subjects. We go on waiting for the Eclaireur, 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 Administrator of the Ogowe, worn out, but chewing Kola
nut to keep himself awake all night while he finishes his papers to
go down on the Eclaireur to-morrow morning, is too painful; so I say
I will walk back to Dumas' and go on the Eclaireur there, and try to
liberate the Administrator from his present engagements, so that he
may go back and work. No good! He will come down to Dumas' with
Mr. Cockshut and me. Off we go, and just exactly as we are getting
on to Dumas' beach, off starts the Eclaireur 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 25th.--Eclaireur has to wait for the Administrator until ten,
because he has not done his mails. At ten he comes on board like an
amiable tornado, for he himself is going to Cape Lopez. I am
grieved to see them carrying on board, too, a French official very
ill with fever. He is the engineer of the canoniere and they are
taking him down to Cape Lopez, where they hope to get a ship to take
him up to Gaboon, and to the hospital on the Minerve. I heard
subsequently that the poor fellow died about forty hours after
leaving Njole at Achyouka in Kama country.
We get away at last, and run rapidly down river, helped by the
terrific current. The Eclaireur has to call at Talagouga for planks
from M. Gacon's sawmill. As soon as we are past the tail of
Talagouga Island, the Eclaireur ties her whistle string to a
stanchion, and goes off into a series of screaming fits, as only she
can. What she wants is to get M. Forget or M. Gacon, or better
still both, out in their canoes with the wood waiting for her,
because "she cannot anchor in the depth," "nor can she turn round,"
and "backing plays the mischief with 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 throws his weight passionately on
the whistle string, for we are in sight of the narrow gorge of
Talagouga, with the Mission Station apparently slumbering in the
sun. This puts the Eclaireur in an awful temper. She goes down
towards it as near as she dare, and then frisks round again, and
runs up river a little way and drops down again, in violent
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 Eclaireur tied up to a tree close in to the bank, for the
water is deep enough here to moor a liner in, only there are a good
many rocks. In a few minutes M. Forget and several canoe loads of
beautiful red-brown mahogany planks are on board, and things being
finished, I say good-bye to the captain, and go off with M. Forget
in a canoe, to the shore.
CHAPTER V. THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE.
The Log of an Adooma canoe during a voyage undertaken to the rapids
of the River Ogowe, with some account of the divers disasters that
befell thereon.
Mme. Forget received me most kindly, and, thanks to her ever
thoughtful hospitality, I spent a very pleasant time at Talagouga,
wandering about the forest and collecting fishes from the native
fishermen: and seeing the strange forms of some of these Talagouga
region fishes and the marked difference between them and those of
Lembarene, I set my heart on going up into the region of the Ogowe
rapids. For some time no one whom I could get hold of regarded it
as a feasible scheme, but, at last, M. Gacon thought it might be
managed; I said I would give a reward of 100 francs to any one who
would lend me a canoe and a crew, and I would pay the working
expenses, food, wages, etc. M. Gacon had a good canoe and could
spare me two English-speaking Igalwas, one of whom had been part of
the way with MM. Allegret and Teisseres, when they made their
journey up to Franceville and then across to Brazzaville and down
the Congo two years ago. He also thought we could get six Fans to
complete the crew. I was delighted, packed my small portmanteau
with a few things, got some trade goods, wound up my watch,
ascertained the date of the day of the month, and borrowed three
hair-pins from Mme. Forget, then down came disappointment. On my
return from the bush that evening, Mme. Forget said M. Gacon said
"it was impossible," the Fans round Talagouga wouldn't go at any
price above Njole, because they were certain they would be killed
and eaten by the up-river Fans. Internally consigning the entire
tribe to regions where they will get a rise in temperature, even on
this climate, I went with Mme. Forget to M. Gacon, and we talked it
over; finally, M. Gacon thought he could let me have two more
Igalwas from Hatton and Cookson's beach across the river. Sending
across there we found this could be done, so I now felt I was in for
it, and screwed my courage to the sticking point--no easy matter
after all the information I had got into my mind regarding the
rapids of the River Ogowe.
I establish myself on my portmanteau comfortably in the canoe, my
back is against the trade box, and behind that is the usual mound of
pillows, sleeping mats, and mosquito-bars of the Igalwa crew; the
whole surmounted by the French flag flying from an indifferent
stick.
M. and Mme. Forget provide me with everything I can possibly
require, and say that the blood of half my crew is half alcohol; on
the whole it is patent they don't expect to see me again, and I
forgive them, because they don't seem cheerful over it; but still it
is not reassuring--nothing is about this affair, and it's going to
rain. It does, as we go up the river to Njole, where there is
another risk of the affair collapsing, by the French authorities
declining to allow me to proceed. On we paddled, M'bo the head man
standing in the bows of the canoe in front of me, to steer, then I,
then the baggage, then the able-bodied seamen, including the cook
also standing and paddling; and at the other extremity of the canoe-
-it grieves me to speak of it in this unseamanlike way, but in these
canoes both ends are alike, and chance alone ordains which is bow
and which is stern--stands Pierre, the first officer, also steering;
the paddles used are all of the long-handled, leaf-shaped Igalwa
type. We get up just past Talagouga Island and then tie up against
the bank of M. Gazenget's plantation, and make a piratical raid on
its bush for poles. A gang of his men come down to us, but only to
chat. One of them, I notice, has had something happen severely to
one side of his face. I ask M'bo what's the matter, and he answers,
with a derisive laugh, "He be fool man, he go for tief plantain and
done got shot." M'bo does not make it clear where the sin in this
affair is exactly located; I expect it is in being "fool man."
Having got our supply of long stout poles we push off and paddle on
again. Before we reach Njole I recognise my crew have got the
grumbles, and at once inquire into the reason. M'bo sadly informs
me that "they no got chop," having been provided only with plantain,
and no meat or fish to eat with it. I promise to get them plenty at
Njole, and contentment settles on the crew, and they sing. After
about three hours we reach Njole, and I proceed to interview the
authorities. Dr. Pelessier is away down river, and the two
gentlemen in charge don't understand English; but Pierre translates,
and the letter which M. Forget has kindly written for me explains
things and so the palaver ends satisfactorily, after a long talk.
First, the official says he does not like to take the responsibility
of allowing me to endanger myself in those rapids. I explain I will
not hold any one responsible but myself, and I urge that a lady has
been up before, a Mme. Quinee. He says "Yes, that is true, but
Madame had with her a husband and many men, whereas I am alone and
have only eight Igalwas and not Adoomas, the proper crew for the
rapids, and they are away up river now with the convoy." "True, oh
King!" I answer, "but Madame Quinee went right up to Lestourville,
whereas I only want to go sufficiently high up the rapids to get
typical fish. And these Igalwas are great men at canoe work, and
can go in a canoe anywhere that any mortal man can go"--this to
cheer up my Igalwa interpreter--"and as for the husband, neither the
Royal Geographical Society's list, in their 'Hints to Travellers,'
nor Messrs. Silver, in their elaborate lists of articles necessary
for a traveller in tropical climates, make mention of husbands."
However, the official ultimately says Yes, I may go, and parts with
me as with one bent on self destruction. This affair being settled
I start off, like an old hen with a brood of chickens to provide
for, to get chop for my men, and go first to Hatton and Cookson's
factory. I find its white Agent is down river after stores, and
John Holt's Agent says he has got no beef nor fish, and is precious
short of provisions for himself; so I go back to Dumas', where I
find a most amiable French gentleman, who says he will let me have
as much fish or beef as I want, and to this supply he adds some
delightful bread biscuits. M'bo and the crew beam with
satisfaction; mine is clouded by finding, when they have carried off
the booty to the canoe, that the Frenchman will not let me pay for
it. Therefore taking the opportunity of his back being turned for a
few minutes, I buy and pay for, across the store counter, some trade
things, knives, cloth, etc. Then I say goodbye to the Agent.
"Adieu, Mademoiselle," says he in a for-ever tone of voice. Indeed
I am sure I have caught from these kind people a very pretty and
becoming mournful manner, and there's not another white station for
500 miles where I can show it off. Away we go, still damp from the
rain we have come through, but drying nicely with the day, and
cheerful about the chop.
The Ogowe is broad at Njole and its banks not mountainous, as at
Talagouga; but as we go on it soon narrows, the current runs more
rapidly than ever, and we are soon again surrounded by the mountain
range. Great masses of black rock show among the trees on the
hillsides, and under the fringe of fallen trees that hang from the
steep banks. Two hours after leaving Njole we are facing our first
rapid. Great gray-black masses of smoothed rock rise up out of the
whirling water in all directions. These rocks have a peculiar
appearance which puzzle me at the time, but in subsequently getting
used to it I accepted it quietly and admired. When 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 white sand was one of the most perfect
things I have ever seen.
We kept along close to the right-hand bank, dodging out of the way
of the swiftest current as much as possible. Ever and again 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 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 sandstones, 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 provided 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 was long, 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 compliments, 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 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 interval between the bits was proportional
to the interval between the villages, and the size of the bits was
proportional to the size of the village. Village number four was
the only one he should recommend our going to. When 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 flat. 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
invitation to spend the night there on our way home, shoved off and
paddled away in great style just to show those Fans what Igalwas
could do.
We 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 slip of rugged confused boulders and fragments of rocks,
carelessly arranged, and evidently under water in the wet season. I
scrambled along, the men yelled and shouted and hauled the canoe,
and the inhabitants of the village, seeing we were becoming amusing
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 did 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
myself, and during the rest of my scramble they kept close to me,
with keen competition for the front row, in hopes that I would do
something like it again. But I refused the encore, 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 white 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 farewell and
paddled away, to the great grief of the natives, for they don't get
a circus up above Njole 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 ordinary
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 before we picked up village number one, mentioned in that
chart. On again, still longer, till we came to village number two.
Village number three hove in sight high up on a mountain side soon
after, but it was getting dark and the water worse, and 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 river from the forests and the side ravines,
where for some hours we had seen it sleeping, like a sailor with his
clothes on in bad weather. On we paddled, looking for signs of
village fires, and seeing them not. The Erd-geist knew we wanted
something, and seeing how we personally lacked it, thought it was
beauty; and being in a kindly mood, gave it us, sending the lovely
lingering flushes 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 us, and
the dark round us was be-gemmed with fire-flies: but we were not as
satisfied with these things as we should have been; what we wanted
were fires to cook by and dry ourselves by, and all that sort of
thing. The Erd-geist did not understand, and so left us when the
afterglow had died away, with only enough starlight to see the
flying foam of the rapids ahead and around us, and not enough to see
the great 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 "lish, swish"; but when there was a rapid roaring close
alongside we ran into those trees, and got ourselves mauled, and had
ticklish times getting on our course again. 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 noisily fighting 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 haul round, not being able
to see either the details or the exact position of the said bank,
and we felt, I think naturally, disinclined to spring in the
direction of such bits of country as we had had experience of during
the afternoon, with nothing but the aid we might have got from a
compass hastily viewed by the transitory light of a lucifer match,
and even this would not have informed us how many tens of feet of
tree fringe lay between us and the land, so we did not attempt it.
One must be careful at times, or nasty accidents may follow. We
fought our way round that corner, yelling defiance at the water, and
dealt with succeeding corners on the vi et armis plan, breaking,
ever and anon, a pole. About 9.30 we got into a savage rapid. We
fought it inch by inch. The canoe jammed herself on some barely
sunken rocks in it. We shoved her off over them. She tilted over
and chucked us out. The rocks round being just awash, we survived
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 inside that time--the men
by the aid of their intelligent feet, I by clinching my hands into
the bush rope lacing which ran round the rim of the canoe and the
meaning of which I did not understand when I left Talagouga. We
sorted ourselves out hastily and sent her at it again. Smash went a
sorely tried pole and a paddle. Round and round we spun in an
exultant whirlpool, which, in a light-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 itself; for
at this juncture all we had to do was to revolve on our own axis and
commence life anew with what had been the bow for the stern. Of
course we were 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
somewhere, anywhere, and down at a terrific pace in the white water
we went. While hitched among the rocks the arrangement of our crew
had been altered, Pierre joining M'bo in the bows; this 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 start us right end
on. This was only a matter of minutes, whirlpools being plentiful,
and then M'bo and Pierre, provided with our surviving poles, stood
in the bows to fend us off rocks, as we shot towards them; while we
midship paddles sat, helping to steer, and when occasion arose,
which occasion did with lightning rapidity, to whack the whirlpools
with the flat of our paddles, to break their force. Cook crouched
in the stern concentrating his mind on steering 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 flapped like fury; M'bo and Pierre received the shock on their
poles; sometimes we glanced successfully aside and flew on;
sometimes we didn't. The shock being too much for M'bo and Pierre
they were driven back on me, who got flattened on to the cargo of
bundles which, being now firmly tied in, couldn't spread 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 to me, considering the
hurry, that we sorted ourselves out correctly with our own
particular legs and arms. And although we in the middle of 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 wild
waltz we danced that night with the waters of the River Ogowe.
Unpleasant as going through the rapids was, when circumstances took
us into the black current we fared no better. For good all-round
inconvenience, 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. 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 worn-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 close 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.
The most interesting question to us now was whether this rock reef
communicated sufficiently with the island for us to get to it.
Abandoning conjecture; tying very firmly our canoe up to the rocks,
a thing that seemed, considering she was jammed hard and immovable,
a little unnecessary--but you can never be sufficiently careful in
this matter with any kind of boat--off we started among the rock
boulders. I would climb up on to a rock table, fall off it on the
other side on to rocks again, with more or less water on them--then
get a patch of singing sand under my feet, then with varying
suddenness get into more water, deep or shallow, broad or narrow
pools among the rocks; out of that over more rocks, etc., etc.,
etc.: my companions, from their noises, evidently were going in for
the same kind of thing, but we were quite cheerful, because the
probability of reaching 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 said "chances
are there's a village round here"; and started to find it. After a
gay time in a rock-encumbered forest, growing in a tangled, matted
way on a rough hillside, at an angle of 45 degrees, M'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 villagers themselves, however,
were the striking features in the picture. They were painted
vermilion all over their nearly naked bodies, and were dancing
enthusiastically to the good old rump-a-tump-tump-tump tune, played
energetically by an old gentleman on a long, high-standing, white-
and-black painted drum. They said that as they had been dancing
when we arrived they had failed to hear us. M'bo secured a--well, I
don't exactly know what to call it--for my use. It was, I fancy,
the remains of the village club-house. It had 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
propped up off the ground with stones, and emitting, as is their
wont, a rather mawkish, but not altogether unpleasant smell, and
volumes of smoke which finds its way out through the thatch, leaving
on the inside of it a rich oily varnish 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 ventilation, was oppressive, for the smell
of the bush lights, my wet clothes, and the natives who crowded into
the hut to look at me, made anything 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 others 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 Island 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 village; and the Adoomas--when things had quieted down
again and the Fans had gone off to build themselves a new village
for their burnt one--came back to Kembe Island and their plantain
patch. They had only done this a few months before my arrival 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 Franceville, and, as I have already said, are the
tribe used by the French authorities to take convoys up and down the
Ogowe to Franceville, more to keep this route open than for
transport purposes; the rapids rendering it impracticable to take
heavy stores this way, and making it a thirty-six days' journey from
Njole with good luck. The practical route is via Loango and
Brazzaville. The Adoomas told us the convoy which had gone up with
the vivacious Government official had had trouble with the rapids
and had spent five days on Kondo Kondo, dragging 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 street, and this
being over they returned to their drum and dance, keeping things up
distinctly late, for it was 11.10 P.M. when we first entered the
village.
While the men were getting their food I 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 village, a very vertically
inclined, slippery little path, but still the one whereby the
natives went up and down to their canoes, which were kept tied up
amongst the rocks. The moon was rising, illumining the sky, but not
yet sending down her light on the foaming, flying Ogowe in its deep
ravine. The scene was divinely lovely; on every side out of the
formless gloom rose the peaks of the Sierra del Cristal. Lomba-
ngawku on the further side of the river surrounded by his companion
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 silver-gray mist lying, basking lazily or
rolling to and fro. Olangi seemed to stretch right across the
river, blocking with his great blunt mass all passage; while away to
the N.E. a cone-shaped peak showed conspicuous, which I afterwards
knew as Kangwe. In the darkness round me flitted thousands of fire-
flies and out beyond this pool of utter night flew by unceasingly
the white foam of the rapids; sound there was none save their
thunder. The majesty and beauty of the scene fascinated me, and 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 all sense of human individuality, all memory of human
life, with its grief and worry and doubt, and become part of the
atmosphere. M'bo, I found, had hung up my mosquito-bar over one of
the hard wood benches, and going cautiously under it I lit a night-
light and read myself asleep with my damp dilapidated old Horace.
Woke at 4 A.M. lying on the ground among the plantain stems, having
by a reckless movement fallen out of the house. Thanks be there are
no mosquitoes. 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 with a new stock of poles, and
subsidising a native to come with us and help us to fight the
rapids.
The greatest breadth of the river channel we now saw, in the
daylight, to be the S.S.W. 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 river 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 of land or of the reefs was sufficient 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 I did several times,
with a sort of automatic devotion to scientific research peculiar to
me. Your best way of getting off is to push on in the 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 twinkling of an eye, we were
swept, broadside on, right across the river to the north bank, and
then engaged in a heavy fight with a severe rapid. After passing
this, the river is fairly uninterrupted by rock for a while, and is
silent and swift. When you are ascending such a piece the effect is
strange; you see the water flying by the side of your canoe, as you
vigorously drive your paddle into it with short rapid strokes, and
you forthwith fancy you are travelling at the rate of a North-
Western express; but you just raise your eyes, my friend, and look
at that bank, which is standing very nearly still, and you will
realise that you and your canoe are standing very 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 disillusionment.
Above the stretch of swift silent water we come to the Isangaladi
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 ally 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 my crew sing M'pongwe songs,
descriptive of how they go to their homes to see their wives, 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 astonishment 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 extolling the excellence of Hatton and Cookson's goods
or Holty's. These M'pongwe and Igalwa boat songs are all very
pretty, and have very elaborate tunes in a minor key. I do not
believe there are any old words to them; I have tried hard to find
out about them, but I believe the tunes, which are of a limited
number and quite distinct from each other, are very old. The words
are put in by the singer on the spur of the moment, and only
restricted in this sense, that there would always be the domestic
catalogue--whatever its component details might be--sung to the one
fixed tune, the trade information sung to another, and so on. A
good singer, in these parts, means the man who can make up the best
song--the most impressive, or the most amusing; I have elsewhere
mentioned pretty 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 marvellously developed series of drum tunes--the attempt to
understand 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 men were now singing were,
in their florid elaboration very different from the one they fought
the rapids to, of--So Sir--So Sur--So Sir--So Sur--Ush! So Sir,
etc.
On we go singing elaborately, thinking no evil 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 scuttling right across the river in spite of our ferocious
swoops at the water, upsetting us among a lot of rocks with the
water boiling over them; this lot of 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
re-embarking return singing "So Sir" across the river, to have it
out with that current. We 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 with wild haste, until, finding no
current to take them down, they drift away into the landlocked 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 solidity about it. In a little 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 water, intent on
breaking up a stockaded fish-trap. We pause and chat, and watch
them collecting the fish in baskets, and I acquire some specimens;
and then, shouting farewells when we are well away, in the proper
civil way, resume our course.
The middle of the Ogowe here is simply forested with high rocks,
looking, as they stand with their grim forms above the foam, like a
regiment of strange strong creatures breasting it, with their
straight faces up river, and their more flowing curves down, as
though they had on black mantles which were swept backwards. Across
on the other bank rose the black-forested spurs of Lomba-njaku. Our
channel was free until we had to fight round the upper end of our
bay into a long rush of strong current with bad whirlpools curving
its face; then the river widens out and quiets down and then
suddenly contracts--a rocky forested promontory running 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
water, making what looks like a gateway which had once been barred
and through which the Ogowe had burst.
For the first time on this 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; really the worst part was not
in the gateway but just before it, for here there is a great
whirlpool, its centre hollowed some one or two 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 arched opening to a large cave in the south bank; the
mountain-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 this season, but in the height of the wet season,
when the river 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, and that the cave is a very long one, extending on
a level some way into the hill, and then ascending 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
live," and you get out and go up the tunnel, which is sometimes
broad, sometimes narrow, sometimes high, sometimes so low that you
have to crawl, and so get out at the other end.
One French gentleman has gone through this performance, and I am
told found "plenty plenty" bats, and hedgehogs, and snakes. They
could not tell me his name, which I much regretted. As we had no
store of bush lights we went no further than the portals; indeed,
strictly between ourselves, if I had had every bush light in Congo
Francais I personally should not have relished going further. I am
terrified of caves; it sends a creaming down my back to think of
them.
We went across the river to see another cave entrance on the other
bank, where there is a narrow stretch of low rock-covered land at
the foot of the mountains, probably under water in the wet season.
The mouth of this other cave is low, between tumbled blocks of rock.
It looked so suspiciously like a short cut to the lower regions,
that I had less exploring enthusiasm about it than 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 this.
My Kembe Island man said that just hereabouts were five cave
openings, the two that we had seen and another one we had not, on
land, and two under the water, one of the sub-fluvial ones being
responsible for the whirlpool we met outside the gateway of Boko
Boko.
The scenery above Boko Boko was exceedingly lovely, the river shut
in between its rim of mountains. As you pass up it opens out in
front of you and closes in behind, the closely-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 colour
giving a relief to the scene.
For a long period we paddle by the south bank, and pass a vertical
cleft-like valley, the upper end of which seems blocked by a finely
shaped mountain, almost as conical as Kangwe. The name of this
mountain is Njoko, and the name of the clear small river, that
apparently monopolises the valley 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 was not
dangerously strong, for the river-bed comes up in a ridge, too high
for much water to come over 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 water and lifting her, we found the water deep and
fairly quiet.
On the north bank we passed by the entrance of the Okana River. Its
mouth is narrow, but, the natives told me, always deep, even in the
height of the dry season. It is a very considerable river, running
inland to the E.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 we were getting over our ridge and paddling
about the Okana's entrance my ears recognised a new sound. The rush
and roar of the Ogowe we knew well enough, and could locate which
particular obstacle to his headlong course was making him say
things; it was either those immovable rocks, which threw him back in
foam, whirling wildly, or it was that fringe of gaunt skeleton trees
hanging from the bank playing a "pull devil, pull baker" contest
that made him hiss 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, "that's the Alemba."
We paddled on towards it, hugging the right-hand bank again to avoid
the mid-river rocks. For a brief space the mountain wall ceased,
and a lovely scene opened before us; we seemed to be looking into
the heart of the chain of the Sierra del Cristal, the abruptly
shaped mountains encircling a narrow plain or valley before us, each
one of them steep in slope, every one of them forest-clad; one,
whose name I know 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 companions. The
colour down this gap was superb, and very Japanese in the evening
glow. The more distant peaks were soft gray-blues and purples,
those nearer, indigo and black. We soon passed this lovely scene
and entered the walled-in channel, creeping up what seemed an
interminable hill of black water, then through some whirlpools and a
rocky channel to the sand and rock shore of our desired island Kondo
Kondo, along whose northern side tore in thunder the Alemba. We
made our canoe fast in a little cove among the rocks, and landed,
pretty stiff and tired and considerably damp. This island, when we
were on it, must have been about half a mile or so long, but during
the long wet season a good deal of it is covered, and only the
higher parts--great heaps of stone, among which grows a long
branched willow-like shrub--are above or nearly above water. The
Adooma from Kembe Island especially drew my attention to this shrub,
telling me his people who worked the rapids always regarded it with
an affectionate veneration; for he said it was the only thing that
helped a man when his canoe got thrown over in the dreaded Alemba,
for its long tough branches swimming in, or close to, the water are
veritable life lines, and his best chance; a chance which must have
failed some poor fellow, whose knife and leopard-skin belt we 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 having a very strong scent of
vanilla and their bright light-green leaves looking very lovely on
the glistening pale sand among the black-gray rock. How 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 Ogowe comes down again and rides
roughshod over Kondo Kondo for months. While 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, lighting 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. When the moon had gone, the sky, still
lit by the stars, seeming indeed to be in itself lambent, was very
lovely, but it shared none of its light with us, and we sat round
our fire surrounded by an utter darkness. Cold, clammy drifts of
almost tangible mist encircled us; ever and again came cold faint
puffs of wandering wind, weird and grim beyond description.
I will not weary you further with details of our ascent of the Ogowe
rapids, for I have done so already sufficiently to make you
understand the sort of work going up them entails, and I have no
doubt that, could I have given you a more vivid picture of them, you
would join me in admiration of the fiery pluck of those few
Frenchmen who traverse them on duty bound. I personally deeply
regret it was not my good fortune to meet again the French official
I had had the pleasure of meeting on the Eclaireur. He would have
been truly great in his description of his voyage to Franceville. I
wonder how he would have "done" his unpacking of canoes and his
experiences on Kondo Kondo, where, by the by, we came across many of
the ashes of his expedition's attributive fires. Well! he must have
been a pleasure to Franceville, and I hope also to the good Fathers
at Lestourville, for those places must be just slightly sombre for
Parisians.
Going down big rapids is always, everywhere, more dangerous than
coming up, because when you are coming up and a whirlpool or eddy
does jam you on rocks, the current helps you off--certainly only
with a view to dashing your brains out and smashing your canoe on
another set of rocks it's got ready below; but for the time being it
helps, and when off, you take charge and convert its plan into an
incompleted fragment; whereas in going down the current is against
your backing off. M'bo had a series of prophetic visions as to what
would happen to us on our way down, founded on reminiscence and
tradition. I tried to comfort him by pointing out that, were any
one of his prophecies fulfilled, it would spare our friends and
relations all funeral expenses; and, unless they went 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. I own
this idea was 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 M'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 river.
Several times we got on to partially submerged table rocks, and were
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.
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
advisable bank, and dodged behind every rock we could, to profit by
the shelter it afforded us from the current. Coming down, fallen-
tree-fringed banks and rocks were converted from friends to foes; so
we kept with all our power in the very centre of the swiftest part
of the current in order to avoid them. The grandest part of the
whole time was coming down, below the Alemba, where the whole great
Ogowe takes a tiger-like spring for about half a mile, I should
think, before it strikes a rock reef below. As you come out from
among the rocks in the upper rapid it gives you--or I should perhaps
confine myself to saying, it gave me--a peculiar internal sensation
to see that stretch of black water, shining like a burnished sheet
of metal, sloping down before one, at such an angle. All you have
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, instead of in a cheerful no-end-of-a-row with the lower
rapid's rocks. This lower rapid is one of the worst in the dry
season; maybe it is so in the wet too, for the river'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 these great sheets of water then over what are rocky
rapids now. Just think what coming down 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, with 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 Cristal.
CHAPTER VI. LEMBARENE.
In which is given some account of the episode of the Hippopotame,
and of the voyager's attempts at controlling an Ogowe canoe; and
also of the Igalwa tribe.
I say good-bye to Talagouga with much regret, and go on board the
Eclaireur, when she returns from Njole, with all my bottles and
belongings. On board I find no other passenger; the Captain's
English has widened out considerably; 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
occupation, only to dash from it to the rail again. During
breakfast their conduct is nerve-shaking. Hastily taking a few
mouthfuls, 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, and with just a shake of his head
to the Engineer, continues his meal. The Engineer shortly
afterwards flies from his seat, and being far thinner than the
Captain, goes through his nearest door with even greater rapidity;
returns, and shakes his head at the Captain, and continues his meal.
Excitement of this kind is infectious, and I also wonder whether I
ought not to show a sympathetic friendliness by flying from my seat
and hurling myself on to the deck through my nearest door, too. But
although there are plenty of doors, as four enter the saloon from
the deck, I do not see my way to doing this performance aimlessly,
and what in this world they are both after I cannot think. So I
confine myself to woman's true sphere, and assist in a humble way by
catching the wine and Vichy water bottles, glasses, and plates of
food, which at every 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. At last I can stand it
no longer, so ask the Captain point-blank what is the matter.
"Nothing," says he, bounding out of his chair and flying out of his
doorway; but on his return he tells me he has got a bet on of two
bottles of champagne with Woermann's Agent for Njole, as to who
shall reach Lembarene first, and the German agent has started off
some time before the Eclaireur 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 the
Ogowe is to going up against its terrific current. 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
Woermann's launch having passed down. He communicates this to the
Engineer; it is impossible she could have passed the Eclaireur since
they started, therefore she must be some where behind at a
subfactory, "N'est-ce pas?" "Oui, oui, certainement," says the
Engineer. The Engineer is, by these considerations, also lulled,
and feels he may do something else but scan the river a la sister
Ann. What that something is puzzles me; it evidently requires
secrecy, and he shrinks from detection. 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 portholes; no one there; he hesitates a few seconds until
I begin to wonder whether his head will suddenly appear through my
port; but he regards this as an unnecessary precaution, and I hear
him enter his cabin which abuts on mine and there is silence for
some minutes. Writing home to his mother, think I, as I go on
putting a new braid round the bottom of a worn skirt. Almost
immediately after follows the sound of a little click from the next
cabin, and then apparently one of the denizens of the infernal
regions has got its tail smashed in a door and the heavy hot
afternoon air 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
retiring young man practising secretly on his clarionet.
The 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 fly off to their guns--bang,
bang, finish; but this time 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." In vain I look across the broad river with its
stretches of yellow sandbanks, where the "hippopotame" should be,
but I can see nothing but four black stumps sticking up in the water
away to the right. Meanwhile the Captain and the Engineer are
flying 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 hippopotamus,
and without doubt this was its body floating." We are 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 Eclaireur.
But no such thing; let them paddle and shout as hard as they like,
the hippo's weight simply anchors them. The Eclaireur 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, ties a light cord belonging to the
leadline 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 out of reach of the canoe. The Captain seeing this gross
dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Reunis broom, hauls it in hand
over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other end of its line
to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the broom into
the water, about ten yards above the canoe, and it drifts towards
it. Breathless excitement! surely they will get it now. Alas, no!
Just when it is within reach of the canoe, a fearful shudder runs
through the broom. It throws up its head and sinks beneath the
tide. A sensation of stun comes over all of us. The crew of the
canoe, ready and eager to grasp 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 Eclaireur goes now close enough to the hippo-anchored canoe for
a rope to be flung to the man in her bows; he catches it and freezes
on gallantly. Saved! No! Oh horror! The lower deck hums with
fear that after all it will not taste that toothsome hippo chop, for
the man who has caught the rope is as nearly as possible jerked
flying out of the canoe when the strain of the Eclaireur contending
with the hippo's inertia flies along it, but his companion behind
him grips him by the legs and is in his turn grabbed, and the crew
holding on to each other with their hands, and on to their craft
with their feet, save the man holding on to the rope and the whole
situation; and slowly bobbing towards us comes the hippopotamus, who
is shortly hauled on board by the winners in triumph.
My esteemed friends, the Captain and the Engineer, who of course
have been below during this hauling, 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 steel 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 Captain and Engineer slitting down the
skin intent on gralloching operations. Providentially, my prophetic
soul induces me to leave the top of the ladder and go forward--"run
to win'ard," as Captain Murray would say--for within two minutes the
Captain and Engineer are up the ladder as if they had been blown up
by the boilers bursting, and go as 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 river-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-canvassed himself first, and
then soaked and saturated himself in Florida water. The flesh
gladdened the hearts of the crew and lower-deck passengers and also
of the inhabitants of Lembarene, who got dashes of it on our arrival
there. Hippo flesh is not to be despised by black man or white; I
have enjoyed it far more than the stringy beef or vapid goat's flesh
one gets down here.
I stayed on board the Eclaireur all night; for it was dark when we
reached Lembarene, too dark to go round to Kangwe; and next morning,
after taking a farewell of her--I hope not a final one, for she is a
most luxurious little vessel for the Coast, and the feeding on board
is excellent and the society varied and charming--I went round to
Kangwe.
I remained some time in the Lembarene district and saw and learnt
many things; I owe most of what I learnt to M. and Mme. Jacot, who
knew a great deal about both the natives and the district, and I owe
much of what I saw to having acquired the art of managing by myself
a native canoe. This "recklessness" of mine I am sure did not merit
the severe criticism it has been subjected to, for my performances
gave immense amusement to others (I can hear Lembarene's shrieks of
laughter now) and to myself they gave great pleasure.
My first attempt was made at Talagouga one very hot afternoon. M.
and Mme. Forget were, I thought, safe having their siestas, Oranie
was with Mme. Gacon. I knew where Mme. 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 impossible 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 bank, 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 stretch of slack water between the bank
and the mill-race-like current of the Ogowe, 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
shoved 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
acquiring pace, I got to the edge of the slack water; and then
displaying 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 current of "the greatest equatorial river in the
world," grabbed my canoe by its tail. We 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 foremost.
Fortunately a big tree was at that time temporarily hanging against
the rock in the river, just below 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 water again, by the aid of the
branches of the tree, which I was in mortal terror would come off
the rock, and insist on accompanying 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 pre-
supposed to have 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 taking 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
attributive crowd of mission children all in a state of frenzy.
They said lots of things in chorus. "What?" said I. 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 the bank close by; and then tying the canoe
firmly up I walked over the mill stream and divers other things
towards my anxious friends. "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.
I found first, that my education in steering from the bow was of no
avail; second, that it was all right if you reversed it. For
instance, when you are in the bow, and make an inward stroke 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.
Understand? Having grasped this law, I crept along up river; and,
by Allah! before I had gone twenty yards, if that wretch, the
current of the greatest, etc., 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
drowned! 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. However, 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 along 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 she
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 I quite see, as she demonstrated, that the
sight of me, teetotumming about, steering in an elaborate and showy
way all the 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 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.
Well, when I got down to Lembarene 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 Gunther 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. Jacot 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 getting 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 my getting drowned.
The sandbanks were showing their yellow heads in all directions when
I came down from Talagouga, and just opposite Andande there was
sticking up out of the water a great, graceful, palm frond. It had
been stuck into the head of the pet sandbank, and every day was
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 river runs fairly quietly, and has
time to deposit its mud. Dark brown the Ogowe flies past the other
side of the island, the main current being deflected that way by a
bend, just below the entrance of the Nguni.
There was great rejoicing. Canoe-load after canoe-load of boys and
girls went to the sandbank, some doing a little fishing round its
rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing.
Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those on that sandbank--
the merry brown forms 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 were looking
at a dance of stars.
They commenced affairs very early on that sandbank, and they kept
them up very late; and all 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 missionaries instead of our sending
them to her--but, fortunately for the work of the world, happiness
is not. One thing I remember which struck me very much regarding
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, "It is such a relief." "A relief?" 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 ground 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. It 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 friend'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. Jacot was a fine, powerful, energetic man, in the prime
of life. He was a teetotaler and a vegetarian; and although
constantly travelling to and fro in his district on his evangelising
work, he had no foolish 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 young
children or I would 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 natives held him in the greatest affection and respect,
and his influence over them was considerable, far more profound than
that of any other missionary 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, particularly
of the little known languages of the Ogowe district. He was, when I
left, busily employed in compiling a dictionary of the Fan tongue,
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 grounded 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. He
was also 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 stole softly out on to the
verandah, you would often find it crowded with a silent, black
audience, listening intently.
The amount of work M. and Mme. Jacot used to get through was, to me,
amazing, and I think the Ogowe Protestant mission sadly short-
handed--its missionaries not being content to follow the usual
Protestant plan out in West Africa, namely, quietly sitting down and
keeping house, with just a few native children indoors to do the
housework, and close by a school and a little church where a service
is held on Sundays. The representatives of the Mission Evangelique
go to and fro throughout the district round each station on
evangelising work, among some of the most dangerous and uncivilised
tribes in Africa, frequently spending a fortnight at a time away
from their homes, on the waterways of a wild and dangerous country.
In addition to going themselves, they send trained natives as
evangelists and Bible-readers, and keep a keen eye on the trained
native, which means a considerable amount of worry and strain too.
The work on the stations is heavy in Ogowe districts, because when
you have got a clearing made and all the buildings up, you have by
no means finished with the affair, for you have to fight the Ogowe
forest back, as a Dutchman fights the sea. But the main cause of
work is the store, which in this exhausting climate is more than
enough work for one man alone.
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 us in Calabar, or
cowries as in Lagos. In order to expedite and simplify this goods
traffic, a written or printed piece of paper is employed--
practically a cheque, which is called a "bon" or "book," and these
"bons" 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 given for these "bons" is the
same from Government, Trade, and Mission. Although the Mission
Evangelique does not trade--i.e. buy produce and sell it at a
profit, its representatives have a great deal of business to attend
to through the store, which is practically a bank. All the native
evangelists, black teachers, Bible-readers and labourers on the
stations are paid off in these bons; and when any representative of
the mission is away on a journey, food bought for themselves and
their canoe crews is paid for in bons, which are brought in by the
natives at their convenience, 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 out 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 storing, customs' duties, shipping
expenses, etc., etc. But it is quite enough to try the patience of
any Saint when you are only keeping store to pay on bons, a la
missionary; for each class of article 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 fish 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 your advantage to pay what we should call, in
Cameroons, "a Kru, cheap copper," and you have 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 for the trader in Congo Francais, 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, etc., better than in gunpowder. This is
a fruitful spring of argument and persuasion. However, whether the
native is passing 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
Francais incapable of deciding what he will have when it comes to
the point. He comes into the shop with a bon in his hand, and we
will say, for example, the idea in his head that he wants fish-
hooks--"jupes," he calls them--but, confronted with the visible
temptation of pomatum, he hesitates, and scratches his head
violently. Surrounding him there are ten or twenty other natives
with their minds in a similar wavering state, but yet anxious to be
served forthwith. In consequence of the stimulating scratch, he
remembers that one of his wives said he was to bring some Lucifer
matches, another wanted cloth for herself, and another knew of some
rubber she could buy very cheap, in tobacco, of a Fan 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 at the mission store. He
finally gets something and takes it home, and likely enough brings
it back, in a day or so, somewhat damaged, desirous of changing it
for some other article or articles. Remember also that these Bantu,
like the Negroes, think externally, in a loud voice; like Mr.
Kipling's 'oont, "'e smells most awful vile," and, if he be a Fan,
he accompanies his observations with violent dramatic gestures, and
let the customer's tribe or sex be what it may, the customer is
sadly, sadly liable to pick up any portable object within reach,
under the shadow of his companions' uproar, and stow it away in his
armpits, between his legs, or, if his cloth be large enough, in
that. Picture to yourself the perplexities of a Christian minister,
engaged in such an occupation as storekeeping under these
circumstances, with, likely enough, a touch of fever on him and
jiggers in his feet; and when the store is closed the goods in it
requiring constant vigilance to keep them free from mildew and white
ants.
Then in addition to the store work, a fruitful source of work and
worry are the schools, for both boys and girls. It is regarded as
futile to attempt to get any real hold over the children unless they
are removed from the influence of the country fashions that surround
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 instruction given in the Mission Evangelique Schools does not
include teaching the boys trades. The girls fare somewhat better,
as they get instruction in sewing and washing and ironing, but I
think in this district the young ladies would be all the better for
being taught cooking.
It is strange that all the cooks employed by the Europeans should be
men, yet all the cooking among the natives themselves 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
improvement, 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, fish both wet and smoked, and flesh of many kinds--including
human in certain districts--snails, snakes, and crayfish, and big
maggot-like pupae of the rhinoceros beetle and the Rhyncophorus
palmatorum. For sweetmeats the sugar-cane abounds, but it is only
used chewed au naturel. For seasoning there is that bark that
tastes like an onion, an onion distinctly passe, but powerful and
permanent, particularly if it has been used in one of the native-
made, rough earthen pots. These pots have a very cave-man look
about them; they are unglazed, unlidded bowls. They stand the fire
wonderfully well, and you have got to stand, as well as you can, the
taste of the aforesaid bark that clings to them, and that of the
smoke which gets into them during cooking operations over an open
wood fire, as well as the soot-like colour they impart to even your
own white rice. Out of all this varied material the natives of the
Congo Francais forests produce, dirtily, carelessly and wastefully,
a dull, indigestible diet. Yam, sweet potatoes, ochres, and maize
are not so much cultivated or used as among the Negroes, and the
daily food is practically plantain--picked while green and the rind
pulled off, and the tasteless woolly interior baked or boiled and
the widely distributed manioc treated in the usual way. The sweet
or non-poisonous manioc I have rarely seen cultivated, because it
gives a much smaller yield, and is much longer coming to perfection.
The poisonous kind is that in general use; its great dahlia-like
roots are soaked in water to remove the poisonous principle, and
then dried and grated up, or more commonly beaten up into a kind of
dough in a wooden trough that looks like a model canoe, with wooden
clubs, which I have seen the curiosity hunter happily taking home as
war clubs to alarm his family with. The thump, thump, thump of this
manioc beating is one of the most familiar sounds in a bush village.
The meal, when beaten up, is used for thickening broths, and rolled
up into bolsters about a foot long and two inches in diameter, and
then wrapped in plantain leaves, and tied round with tie-tie and
boiled, or more properly speaking steamed, for a lot of the rolls
are arranged in a brass skillet. A small quantity of water is
poured over the rolls of plantain, a plantain leaf is tucked in over
the top tightly, so as to prevent the steam from escaping, and the
whole affair is poised on the three cooking-stones over a wood fire,
and left there until the contents are done, or more properly
speaking, until the lady in charge of it has delusions on the point,
and the bottom rolls are a trifle burnt or the whole insufficiently
cooked.
This manioc meal is the staple food, the bread equivalent, all along
the coast. As you pass along you are perpetually meeting with a new
named food, fou-fou on the Leeward, kank on the Windward, m'vada in
Corisco, ogooma in the Ogowe; but acquaintance with it demonstrates
that it is all the same--manioc.
It is a good food when it is properly prepared; but when a village
has soaked its soil-laden manioc tubers in one and the same pool of
water for years, the water in that pool becomes a trifle strong, and
both it and the manioc get a smell which once smelt is never to be
forgotten; it is something like that resulting from bad paste with a
dash of vinegar, but fit to pass all these things, and has qualities
of its own that have no civilised equivalent.
I believe that this way of preparing the staple article of diet is
largely responsible for that dire and frequent disease "cut him
belly," and several other quaint disorders, possibly even for the
sleep disease. The natives themselves say that a diet too
exclusively maniocan produces dimness of vision, ending in blindness
if the food is not varied; the poisonous principle cannot be
anything like soaked out in the surcharged water, and the meal when
it is made up and cooked has just the same sour, acrid taste you
would expect it to have from the smell.
The fish is boiled, or wrapped in leaves and baked. The dried fish,
very properly known as stink-fish, is much preferred; this is either
eaten as it is, or put into stews as seasoning, as also are the
snails. The meat is eaten either fresh or smoked, boiled or baked.
By baked I always mean just buried in the ground and a fire lighted
on top, or wrapped in leaves and buried in hot embers.
The smoked meat is badly prepared, just hung up in the smoke of the
fires, which hardens it, blackening the outside quickly; but when
the lumps are taken out of the smoke, in a short time cracks occur
in them, and the interior part proceeds to go bad, and needless to
say maggoty. If it is kept in the smoke, as it often is to keep it
out of the way of dogs and driver ants, it acquires the toothsome
taste and texture of a piece of old tarpaulin.
Now I will ask the surviving reader who has waded through this
dissertation on cookery if something should not be done to improve
the degraded condition of the Bantu cooking culture? Not for his
physical delectation only, but because his present methods are bad
for his morals, and drive the man to drink, let alone assisting in
riveting him in the practice of polygamy, which the missionary party
say is an exceedingly bad practice for him to follow. The inter-
relationship of these two subjects may not seem on the face of it
very clear, but inter-relationships of customs very rarely are; I
well remember M. Jacot coming home one day at Kangwe from an
evangelising visit to some adjacent Fan towns, and saying he had had
given to him that afternoon a new reason for polygamy, which was
that it enabled a man to get enough to eat. This sounds sinister
from a notoriously cannibal tribe; but the explanation is that the
Fans are an exceedingly hungry tribe, and require a great deal of
providing for. It is their custom to eat about ten times a day when
in village, and the men spend most of their time in the palaver-
houses at each end of the street, the women bringing them bowls of
food of one kind or another all day long. When the men are away in
the forest rubber or elephant-hunting, and have to cook their own
food, they cannot get quite so much; but when I have come across
them on these expeditions, they halted pretty regularly every two
hours and had a substantial snack, and the gorge they all go in for
after a successful elephant hunt is a thing to see--once.
There are other reasons which lead to the prevalence of this custom,
beside the cooking. One is that it is totally impossible for one
woman to do the whole work of a house--look after the children,
prepare and cook the food, prepare the rubber, carry the same to the
markets, fetch the daily supply of water from the stream, cultivate
the plantation, etc., etc. Perhaps I should say it is impossible
for the dilatory African woman, for I once had an Irish charwoman,
who drank, who would have done the whole week's work of an African
village in an afternoon, and then been quite fresh enough to knock
some of the nonsense out of her husband's head with that of the
broom, and throw a kettle of boiling water or a paraffin lamp at
him, if she suspected him of flirting with other ladies. That
woman, who deserves fame in the annals of her country, was named
Harragan. She has attained immortality some years since, by falling
down stairs one Saturday night from excitement arising from "the
Image's" (Mr. Harragan) conduct; but we have no Mrs. Harragan in
Africa. The African lady does not care a travelling whitesmith's
execration if her husband does flirt, so long as he does not go and
give to other women the cloth, etc., that she should have. The more
wives the less work, says the African lady; and I have known men who
would rather have had one wife and spent the rest of the money on
themselves, in a civilised way, driven into polygamy by the women;
and of course this state of affairs is most common in nonslave-
holding tribes like the Fan.
Mission work was first opened upon the Ogowe by Dr. Nassau, the
great pioneer and explorer of these regions. He was acting for the
American Presbyterian Society; but when the French Government
demanded education in French in the schools, the stations on the
Ogowe, Lembarene (Kangwe), and Talagouga were handed over to the
Mission Evangelique of Paris, and have been carried on by its
representatives with great devotion and energy. I am unsympathetic,
in some particulars, for reasons of my own, with Christian missions,
so my admiration for this one does not arise from the usual ground
of admiration for missions, namely, that however they may be carried
on, they are engaged in a great and holy work; but I regard the
Mission Evangelique, judging from the results I have seen, as the
perfection of what one may call a purely spiritual mission.
Lembarene is strictly speaking a district which includes Adanlinan
langa and the Island, but the name is locally used to denote the
great island in the Ogowe, whose native name is Nenge Ezangy; but
for the sake of the general reader I will keep to the everyday term
of Lembarene Island.
Lembarene Island is the largest of the islands on the Ogowe. It is
some fifteen miles long, east and west, and a mile to a mile and a
half wide. It is hilly and rocky, uniformly clad with forest, and
several little permanent streams run from it on both sides into the
Ogowe. It is situated 130 miles from the sea, at the point, just
below the entrance of the N'guni, where the Ogowe commences to
divide up into that network of channels by which, like all great
West African rivers save the Congo, it chooses to enter the Ocean.
The island, as we mainlanders at Kangwe used to call it, was a great
haunt of mine, particularly after I came down from Talagouga and saw
fit to regard myself as competent to control a canoe.
From Andande, the beach of Kangwe, the breadth of the arm of the
Ogowe to the nearest village on the island, was about that of the
Thames at Blackwall. One half of the way was slack water, the other
half was broadside on to a stiff current. Now my pet canoe at
Andande was about six feet long, pointed at both ends, flat
bottomed, so that it floated on the top of the water; its freeboard
was, when nothing was in it, some three inches, and the poor thing
had seen trouble in its time, for it had a hole you could put your
hand in at one end; so in order to navigate it successfully, you had
to squat in the other, which immersed that to the water level but
safely elevated the damaged end in the air. Of course you had to
stop in your end firmly, because if you went forward the hole went
down into the water, and the water went into the hole, and forthwith
you foundered with all hands--i.e., you and the paddle and the
calabash baler. This craft also had a strong weather helm, owing to
a warp in the tree of which it had been made. I learnt all these
things one afternoon, paddling round the sandbank; and the next
afternoon, feeling confident in the merits of my vessel, I started
for the island, and I actually got there, and associated with the
natives, but feeling my arms were permanently worn out by paddling
against the current, I availed myself of the offer of a gentleman to
paddle me back in his canoe. He introduced himself as Samuel, and
volunteered the statement that he was "a very good man." We duly
settled ourselves in the canoe, he occupying the bow, I sitting in
the middle, and a Mrs. Samuel sitting in the stern. Mrs. Samuel was
a powerful, pretty lady, and a conscientious and continuous paddler.
Mr. S. was none of these things, but an ex-Bible reader, with an
amazing knowledge of English, which he spoke in a quaint, falsetto,
far-away sort of voice, and that man's besetting sin was curiosity.
"You be Christian, ma?" said he. I asked him if he had ever met a
white man who was not. "Yes, ma," says Samuel. I said "You must
have been associating with people whom you ought not to know."
Samuel fortunately not having a repartee for this, paddled on with
his long paddle for a few seconds. "Where be your husband, ma?" was
the next conversational bomb he hurled at me. "I no got one," I
answer. "No got," says Samuel, paralysed with astonishment; and as
Mrs. S., who did not know English, gave one of her vigorous drives
with her paddle at this moment, Samuel as near as possible got
jerked head first into the Ogowe, and we took on board about two
bucketfuls of water. He recovered himself, however and returned to
his charge. "No got one, ma?" "No," say I furiously. "Do you get
much rubber round here?" "I no be trade man," says Samuel, refusing
to fall into my trap for changing conversation. "Why you no got
one?" The remainder of the conversation is unreportable, but he
landed me at Andande all right, and got his dollar.
The next voyage I made, which was on the next day, I decided to go
by myself to the factory, which is on the other side of the island,
and did so. I got some goods to buy fish with, and heard from Mr.
Cockshut that the poor boy-agent at Osoamokita, had committed
suicide. It was a grievous thing. He was, as I have said, a
bright, intelligent young Frenchman; but living in the isolation,
surrounded by savage, tiresome tribes, the strain of his
responsibility had been too much for him. He had had a good deal of
fever, and the very kindly head agent for Woermann's had sent Dr.
Pelessier to see if he had not better be invalided home; but he told
the Doctor he was much better, and as he had no one at home to go to
he begged him not to send him, and the Doctor, to his subsequent
regret, gave in. No one knows, who has not been to West Africa, how
terrible is the life of a white man in one of these out-of-the-way
factories, with no white society, and with nothing to look at, day
out and day in, but the one set of objects--the forest, the river,
and the beach, which in a place like Osoamokita you cannot leave for
months at a time, and of which you soon know every plank and stone.
I felt utterly wretched as I started home again to come up to the
end of the island, and go round it and down to Andande; and paddled
on for some little time, before I noticed that I was making
absolutely no progress. I redoubled my exertions, and crept slowly
up to some rocks projecting above the water; but pass them I could
not, as the main current of the Ogowe flew in hollow swirls round
them against my canoe. Several passing canoefuls of natives gave me
good advice in Igalwa; but facts were facts, and the Ogowe was too
strong for me. After about twenty minutes an old Fan gentleman came
down river in a canoe and gave me good advice in Fan, and I got him
to take me in tow--that is to say, he got into my canoe and I held
on to his and we went back down river. I then saw his intention was
to take me across to that disreputable village, half Fan, half
Bakele, which is situated on the main bank of the river opposite the
island; this I disapproved of, because I had heard that some Senegal
soldiers who had gone over there, had been stripped of every rag
they had on, and maltreated; besides, it was growing very late, and
I wanted to get home to dinner. I communicated my feelings to my
pilot, who did not seem to understand at first, so I feared I should
have to knock them into him with the paddle; but at last he
understood I wanted to be landed on the island and duly landed me,
when he seemed much surprised at the reward I gave him in pocket-
handkerchiefs. Then I got a powerful young Igalwa dandy to paddle
me home.
I did not go to the island next day, but down below Fula, watching
the fish playing in the clear water, and the lizards and birds on
the rocky high banks; but on my next journey round to the factories
I got into another and a worse disaster. I went off there early one
morning; and thinking the only trouble lay in getting back up the
Ogowe, and having developed a theory that this might be minimised by
keeping very close to the island bank, I never gave a thought to
dangers attributive to going down river; so, having by now acquired
pace, my canoe shot out beyond the end rocks of the island into the
main stream. It took me a second to realise what had happened, and
another to find out I could not get the canoe out of the current
without upsetting it, and that I could not force her back up the
current, so there was nothing for it but to keep her head straight
now she had bolted. A group of native ladies, who had followed my
proceedings with much interest, shouted observations which I believe
to have been "Come back, come back; you'll be drowned." "Good-bye,
Susannah, don't you weep for me," I courteously retorted; and flew
past them and the factory beaches and things in general, keenly
watching for my chance to run my canoe up a siding, as it were, off
the current main line. I got it at last--a projecting spit of land
from the island with rocks projecting out of the water in front of
it bothered the current, and after a wild turn round or so, and a
near call from my terrified canoe trying to climb up a rock, I got
into slack water and took a pause in life's pleasures for a few
minutes. Knowing I must be near the end of the island, I went on
pretty close to the bank, finally got round into the Kangwe branch
of the Ogowe by a connecting creek, and after an hour's steady
paddling I fell in with three big canoes going up river; they took
me home as far as Fula, whence a short paddle landed me at Andande
only slightly late for supper, convinced that it was almost as safe
and far more amusing to be born lucky than wise.
Now I have described my circumnavigation of the island, I will
proceed to describe its inhabitants. The up-river end of Lembarene
Island is the most inhabited. A path round the upper part of the
island passes through a succession of Igalwa villages and by the
Roman Catholic missionary station. The slave villages belonging to
these Igalwas are away down the north face of the island, opposite
the Fan town of Fula, which I have mentioned. It strikes me as
remarkable that the Igalwa, like the Dualla of Cameroons, have their
slaves in separate villages; but this is the case, though I do not
know the reason of it. These Igalwa slaves cultivate the
plantations, and bring up the vegetables and fruit to their owners'
villages and do the housework daily.
The interior of the island is composed of high, rocky, heavily
forested hills, with here and there a stream, and here and there a
swamp; the higher land is towards the up-river end; down river there
is a lower strip of land with hillocks. This is, I fancy, formed by
deposits of sand, etc., catching in among the rocks, and connecting
what were at one time several isolated islands. There are no big
game or gorillas on the island, but it has a peculiar and awful
house ant, much smaller than the driver ant, but with a venomous,
bad bite; its only good point is that its chief food is the white
ants, which are therefore kept in abeyance on Lembarene Island,
although flourishing destructively on the mainland banks of the
river in this locality. I was never tired of going and watching
those Igalwa villagers, nor were, I think, the Igalwa villagers ever
tired of observing me. Although the physical conditions of life
were practically identical with those of the mainland, the way in
which the Igalwas dealt with them, i.e. the culture, was distinct
from the culture of the mainland Fans.
The Igalwas are a tribe very nearly akin, if not ethnically
identical with, the M'pongwe, and the culture of these two tribes is
on a level with the highest native African culture. African
culture, I may remark, varies just the same as European in this,
that there is as much difference in the manners of life between,
say, an Igalwa and a Bubi of Fernando Po, as there is between a
Londoner and a Laplander.
The Igalwa builds his house like that of the M'pongwe, of bamboo,
and he surrounds himself with European-made articles. The neat
houses, fitted with windows, with wooden shutters to close at night,
and with a deal door--a carpenter-made door--are in sharp contrast
with the ragged ant-hill looking performances of the Akkas, or the
bark huts of the Fan, with no windows, and just an extra broad bit
of bark to slip across the hole that serves as a door. On going
into an Igalwa house you will see a four-legged table, often covered
with a bright-coloured tablecloth, on which stands a water bottle,
with two clean glasses, and round about you will see chairs--Windsor
chairs. These houses have usually three, sometimes more rooms, and
a separate closed-in little kitchen, built apart, wherein you may
observe European-made saucepans, in addition to the ubiquitous
skillet. Outside, all along the clean sandy streets, the
inhabitants are seated. The Igalwa is truly great at sitting, the
men pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity, broken occasionally by
leisurely netting a fishing net, the end of the netting hitched up
on to the roof thatch, and not held by a stirrup. The ladies are
employed in the manufacture of articles pertaining to a higher
culture--I allude, as Mr. Micawber would say, to bed-quilts and
pillow-cases--the most gorgeous bed-quilts and pillow-cases--made of
patchwork, and now and again you will see a mosquito-bar in course
of construction, of course not made of net or muslin because of the
awesome strength and ferocity of the Lembarene strain of mosquitoes,
but of stout, fair-flowered and besprigged chintzes; and you will
observe these things are often being sewn with a sewing machine.
The women who may not be busy sewing are busy doing each other's
hair. Hair-dressing is quite an art among the Igalwa and M'pongwe
women, and their hair is very beautiful; very crinkly, but fine. It
is plaited up, close to the head, partings between the plaits making
elaborate parterres. Into the beds of plaited hair are stuck long
pins of river ivory (hippo), decorated with black tracery and
openwork, and made by their good men. A lady will stick as many of
these into her hair as she can get, but the prevailing mode is to
have one stuck in behind each ear, showing their broad, long heads
above like two horns; they are exceedingly becoming to these black
but comely ladies, verily, I think, the comeliest ladies I have ever
seen on the Coast. Very black they are, blacker than many of their
neighbours, always blacker than the Fans, and although their skin
lacks that velvety pile of the true negro, it is not too shiny, but
it is fine and usually unblemished, and their figures are charmingly
rounded, their hands and feet small, almost as small as a high-class
Calabar woman's, and their eyes large, lustrous, soft and brown, and
their teeth as white as the sea surf and undisfigured by filing.
The native dress for men and women alike is the cloth or paun. The
men wear it by rolling the upper line round the waist, and in
addition they frequently wear a singlet or a flannel shirt worn MORE
AFRICANO, flowing free. Rich men will mount a European coat and
hat, and men connected with the mission or trading stations
occasionally wear trousers. The personal appearance of the men does
not amount to much when all's done, so we will return to the ladies.
They wrap the upper hem of these cloths round under the armpits, a
graceful form of drapery, but one which requires continual
readjustment. The cloth is about four yards long and two deep, and
there is always round the hem a border, or false hem, of turkey red
twill, or some other coloured cotton cloth to the main body of the
paun. In addition to the cloth there is worn, when possible, a
European shawl, either one of those thick cotton cloth ones printed
with Chinese-looking patterns in dull red on a dark ground, this
sort is wrapped round the upper part of the body: or what is more
highly esteemed is a bright, light-coloured, fancy wool shawl, pink
or pale blue preferred, which being carefully folded into a roll is
placed over one shoulder, and is entirely for dandy. I am thankful
to say they do not go in for hats; when they wear anything on their
heads it is a handkerchief folded shawl-wise; the base of the
triangle is bound round the forehead just above the eyebrows, the
ends carried round over the ears and tied behind over the apex of
the triangle of the handkerchief, the three ends being then arranged
fan-wise at the back. Add to this costume a sober-coloured silk
parasol, not one of your green or red young tent-like, brutally
masculine, knobby-sticked umbrellas, but a fair, lady-like parasol,
which, being carefully rolled up, is carried handle foremost right
in the middle of the head, also for dandy. Then a few strings of
turquoise-blue beads, or imitation gold ones, worn round the shapely
throat; and I will back my Igalwa or M'pongwe belle against any of
those South Sea Island young ladies we nowadays hear so much about,
thanks to Mr. Stevenson, yea, even though these may be wreathed with
fragrant flowers, and the African lady very rarely goes in for
flowers. The only time I have seen the African ladies wearing them
for ornament has been among these Igalwas, who now and again stud
their night-black hair with pretty little round vividly red blossoms
in a most fetching way. I wonder the Africans do not wear flowers
more frequently, for they are devoted to scent, both men and women.
The Igalwas are a proud race, one of the noble tribes, like the
M'pongwe and the Ajumba. The women do not intermarry with lower-
class tribes, and in their own tribe they are much restricted, owing
to all relations on the mother's side being forbidden to intermarry.
This well-known form of accounting relationships only through the
mother (Mutterrecht) is in a more perfected and elaborated form
among the Igalwa than among any other tribe I am personally
acquainted with; brothers and cousins on the mother's side being in
one class of relationship.
The father's responsibility, as regards authority over his own
children, is very slight. The really responsible male relative is
the mother's elder brother. From him must leave to marry be
obtained for either girl, or boy; to him and the mother must the
present be taken which is exacted on the marriage of a girl; and
should the mother die, on him and not on the father, lies the
responsibility of rearing the children; they go to his house, and he
treats and regards them as nearer and dearer to himself than his own
children, and at his death, after his own brothers by the same
mother, they become his heirs.
Marriage among the Igalwa and M'pongwe is not direct marriage by
purchase, but a certain fixed price present is made to the mother
and uncle of the girl. Other propitiatory presents (Kueliki) are
made, but do not count legally, and have not necessarily to be
returned in case of post-nuptial differences arising leading to a
divorce--a very frequent catastrophe in the social circle; for the
Igalwa ladies are spirited, and devoted to personal adornment, and
they are naggers at their husbands. Many times when walking on
Lembarene Island, have I seen a lady stand in the street and let her
husband, who had taken shelter inside the house, know what she
thought of him, in a way that reminded me of some London slum
scenes. When the husband loses his temper, as he surely does sooner
or later, being a man, he whacks his wife--or wives, if they have
been at him in a body. He may whack with impunity so long as he
does not draw blood; if he does, be it never so little, his wife is
off to her relations, the present he has given for her is returned,
the marriage is annulled, and she can re-marry as soon as she is
able.
Her relations are only too glad to get her, because, although the
present has to be returned, yet the propitiatory offerings remain
theirs, and they know more propitiatory offerings as well as another
present will accrue with the next set of suitors. This of course is
only the case with the younger women; the older women for one thing
do not nag so much, and moreover they have usually children willing
and able to support them. If they have not, their state is, like
that of all old childless women in Africa, a very desolate one.
Infant marriage is now in vogue among the Igalwa, and to my surprise
I find it is of quite recent introduction and adoption. Their own
account of this retrograde movement in culture is that in the last
generation--some of the old people indeed claim to have known him--
there was an exceedingly ugly and deformed man who could not get a
wife, the women being then, as the men are now, great admirers of
physical beauty. So this man, being very cunning, hit on the idea
of becoming betrothed to one before she could exercise her own
choice in the matter; and knowing a family in which an interesting
event was likely to occur, he made heavy presents in the proper
quarters and bespoke the coming infant if it should be a girl. A
girl it was, and thus, say the Igalwa, arose the custom; and
nowadays, although they do not engage their wives so early as did
the founder of the custom, they adopt infant marriage as an
institution.
I inquired carefully, in the interests of ethnology, as to what
methods of courting were in vogue previously. They said people
married each other because they loved each other. I hope other
ethnologists will follow this inquiry up, for we may here find a
real golden age, which in other races of humanity lies away in the
mists of the ages behind the kitchen middens and the Cambrian rocks.
My own opinion in this matter is that the earlier courting methods
of the Igalwa involved a certain amount of effort on the man's part,
a thing abhorrent to an Igalwa. It necessitated his dressing
himself up, and likely enough fighting that impudent scoundrel who
was engaged in courting her too; and above all serenading her at
night on the native harp, with its strings made from the tendrils of
a certain orchid, or on the marimba, amongst crowds of mosquitoes.
Any institution that involved being out at night amongst crowds of
those Lembarene mosquitoes would have to disappear, let that
institution be what it might.
The Igalwa are one of the dying-out coast tribes. As well as on
Lembarene Island, their villages are scattered along the banks of
the Lower Ogowe, and on the shores and islands of Eliva Z'Onlange.
On the island they are, so far, undisturbed by the Fan invasion, and
laze their lives away like lotus-eaters. Their slaves work their
large plantations, and bring up to them magnificent yams, ready
prepared ogooma, sweet-potatoes, papaw, etc., not forgetting that
delicacy Odeaka cheese; this is not an exclusive inspiration of
theirs, for the M'pongwe and the Benga use it as well. It is made
from the kernel of the wild mango, a singularly beautiful tree of
great size and stately spread of foliage. I can compare it only in
appearance and habit of growth to our Irish, or evergreen, oak, but
it is an idealisation of that fine tree. Its leaves are a softer,
brighter, deeper green, and in due season (August) it is covered--
not ostentatiously like the real mango, with great spikes of bloom,
looking each like a gigantic head of mignonette--but with small
yellow-green flowers tucked away under the leaves, filling the air
with a soft sweet perfume, and then falling on to the bare shaded
ground beneath to make a deep-piled carpet. I do not know whether
it is a mango tree at all, for I am no botanist: but anyhow the
fruit is rather like that of the mango in external appearance, and
in internal still more so, for it has a disproportionately large
stone. These stones are cracked, and the kernel taken out. The
kernels are spread a short time in the shade to dry; then they are
beaten up into a pulp with a wooden pestle, and the pulp put into a
basket lined carefully with plantain leaves and placed in the sun,
which melts it up into a stiff mass. The basket is then removed
from the sun and stood aside to cool. When cool, the cheese can be
turned out in shape, and can be kept a long time if it is wrapped
round with leaves and a cloth, and hung up inside the house. Its
appearance is that of almond rock, and it is cut easily with a
knife; but at any period of its existence, if it is left in the sun
it melts again rapidly into an oily mass.
The natives use it as a seasoning in their cookery, stuffing fish
and plantains with it and so on, using it also in the preparation of
a sort of sea-pie they make with meat and fish. To make this, a
thing well worth doing, particularly with hippo or other coarse
meat, reduce the wood fire to embers, and make plantain leaves into
a sort of bag, or cup; small pieces of the meat should then be
packed in layers with red pepper and odeaka in between. The tops of
the leaves are then tied together with fine tie-tie, and the bundle,
without any saucepan of any kind, stood on the glowing embers, the
cook taking care there is no flame. The meat is done, and a superb
gravy formed, before the containing plantain leaves are burnt
through--plantain leaves will stand an amazing lot in the way of
fire. This dish is really excellent, even when made with python,
hippo, or crocodile. It makes the former most palatable; but of
course it does not remove the musky taste from crocodile; nothing I
know of will.
The great and important difference between the M'pongwe, {167}
Igalwa, and Ajumba fetish, and the Fetish of those tribes round
them, consists in their conception of a certain spirit called O
Mbuiri. They have, as is constant among the Bantu races of South-
West Africa, a great god--the creator, a god who has made all
things, and who now no longer takes any interest in the things he
has created. Their name for this god is Anyambie, which when
pronounced sounds to my ears like anlynlae--the l's being very
weak,--the derivation of this name, however, is from Anyima a
spirit, and Mbia, good. This god, unlike other forms of the
creating god in Fetish, has a viceroy or minister who is a god he
has created, and to whom he leaves the government of affairs. This
god is O Mbuiri or O Mbwiri, and this O Mbwiri is of very high
interest to the student of comparative fetish. He has never been,
nor can he ever become, a man, i.e. be born as a man, but he can
transfuse with his own personality that of human beings, and also
the souls of all those things we white men regard as inanimate, such
as rocks, trees, etc., in a similar manner.
The M'pongwe know that his residence is in the sea, and some of them
have seen him as an old white man, not flesh-colour white, but chalk
white. There is another important point here, but it wants a volume
to itself, so I must pass it. O Mbuiri's appearance in a corporeal
form denotes ill luck, not death to the seer, but misfortune of a
severe and diffused character. The ruin of a trading enterprise,
the destruction of a village or a family, are put down to O Mbuiri's
action. Yet he is not regarded as a malevolent god, a devil, but as
an avenger, or punisher of sin; and the M'pongwe look on him as the
Being to whom they primarily owe the good things and fortunes of
this life, and as the Being who alone has power to govern the host
of truly malevolent spirits that exist in nature.
The different instruments with which he works in the shaping of
human destiny bear his name when in his employ. When acting by
means of water, he is O Mbuiri Aningo; when in the weather, O Mbuiri
Ngali; when in the forests, O Mbuiri Ibaka; when in the form of a
dwarf, O Mbuiri Akoa, and so on.
The great difference between O Mbuiri and the lesser spirits is
this: --the lesser spirits cannot incarnate themselves except
through extraneous things; O Mbuiri can, he can become visible
without anything beyond his own will to do so. The other spirits
must be in something to become visible. This is an extremely
delicate piece of Fetish which it took me weeks to work out. I
think I may say another thing about O Mbuiri, though I say it
carefully, and that is, that among the M'pongwe and the tribe who
are the parent tribe of the M'pongwe--the now rapidly dying out
Ajumba, and their allied tribe the Igalwa--O Mbuiri is a distinct
entity, while among the neighbouring tribes he is a class, i.e.
there are hundreds of O Mbuiri or Ibwiri, one for every remarkable
place or thing, such as rock, tree, or forest thicket, and for every
dangerous place in a river. Had I not observed a similar state of
affairs regarding Sasabonsum, a totally different kind of spirit on
the Windward coast, I should have had even greater trouble than I
had, in finding a key to what seemed at first a mass of conflicting
details regarding this important spirit O Mbuiri.
There is one other very important point in M'pongwe Fetish; and that
is that the souls of men exist before birth as well as after death.
This is indeed, as far as I have been able to find out, a doctrine
universally held by the West African tribes, but among the M'pongwe
there is this modification in it, which agrees strangely well with
the idea I found regarding reincarnated diseases, existent among the
Okyon tribes (pure negroes). The malevolent minor spirits are
capable of being born with, what we will call, a man's soul, as well
as going in with the man's soul during sleep. For example, an Olaga
may be born with a man and that man will thereby be born mad; he may
at any period of his life, given certain conditions, become
possessed by an evil spirit, Onlogho Abambo, Injembe, Nkandada, and
become mad, or ill; but if he is born mad, or sickly, one of the
evil spirits such as an Olaga or an Obambo, the soul of a man that
has not been buried properly, has been born with him.
The rest of the M'pongwe Fetish is on broad lines common to other
tribes, so I relegate it to the general collection of notes on
Fetish. M'pongwe jurisprudence is founded on the same ideas as
those on which West African jurisprudence at large is founded, but
it is so elaborated that it would be desecration to sketch it. It
requires a massive monograph.
CHAPTER VII. ON THE WAY FROM KANGWE TO LAKE NCOVI.
In which the voyager goes for bush again and wanders into a new lake
and a new river.
July 22nd, 1895.--Left Kangwe. The four Ajumba {170} did not turn
up early in the morning as had been arranged, but arrived about
eight, in pouring rain, so decided to wait until two o'clock, which
will give us time to reach their town of Arevooma before nightfall,
and may perhaps give us a chance of arriving there dry. At two we
start. We go down river on the Kangwe side of Lembarene Island,
make a pause in front of the Igalwa slave town, which is on the
Island and nearly opposite the Fan town of Fula on the mainland
bank, our motive being to get stores of yam and plantain--and
magnificent specimens of both we get--and then, when our canoe is
laden with them to an extent that would get us into trouble under
the Act if it ran here, off we go again. Every canoe we meet shouts
us a greeting, and asks where we are going, and we say "Rembwe"--and
they say "What! Rembwe!"--and we say "Yes, Rembwe," and paddle on.
I lay among the luggage for about an hour, not taking much interest
in the Rembwe or anything else, save my own headache; but this soon
lifted, and I was able to take notice, just before we reached the
Ajumba's town, called Arevooma. The sandbanks stretch across the
river here nearly awash, so all our cargo of yams has to be thrown
overboard on to the sand, from which they can be collected by being
waded out to. The canoe, thus lightened, is able to go on a little
further, but we are soon hard and fast again, and the crew have to
jump out and shove her off about once every five minutes, and then
to look lively about jumping back into her again, as she shoots over
the cliffs of the sandbanks.
When we reach Arevooma, I find it is a very prettily situated town,
on the left-hand bank of the river--clean and well kept, and
composed of houses built on the Igalwa and M'pongwe plan with walls
of split bamboo and a palm thatch roof. I own I did not much care
for these Ajumbas on starting, but they are evidently going to be
kind and pleasant companions. One of them is a gentlemanly-looking
man, who wears a gray shirt; another looks like a genial Irishman
who has accidentally got black, very black; he is distinguished by
wearing a singlet; another is a thin, elderly man, notably silent;
and the remaining one is a strapping, big fellow, as black as a
wolf's mouth, of gigantic muscular development, and wearing
quantities of fetish charms hung about him. The two first mentioned
are Christians; the other two pagans, and I will refer to them by
their characteristic points, for their honourable names are awfully
alike when you do hear them, and, as is usual with Africans, rarely
used in conversation.
Gray Shirt places his house at my disposal, and both he and his
exceedingly pretty wife do their utmost to make me comfortable. The
house lies at the west end of the town. It is one room inside, but
has, I believe, a separate cooking shed. In the verandah in front
is placed a table, an ivory bundle chair and a gourd of water, and I
am also treated to a calico tablecloth, and most thoughtfully
screened off from the public gaze with more calico so that I can
have my tea in privacy. After this meal, to my surprise Ndaka turns
up. Certainly he is one of the very ugliest men--black or white--I
have ever seen, and I fancy one of the best. He is now on a holiday
from Kangwe, seeing to the settlement of his dead brother's affairs.
The dead brother was a great man in Arevooma and a pagan, but Ndaka,
the Christian Bible-reader, seems to get on perfectly with the
family and is holding tonight a meeting outside his brother's house
and comes with a lantern to fetch me to attend it. Of course I have
to go, headache or no headache.
Most of the town was there, mainly as spectators. Ndaka and my two
Christian boatmen manage the service between them, and what with the
hymns and the mosquitoes the experience is slightly awful. We sit
in a line in front of the house, which is brilliantly lit up--our
own lantern on the ground before us acting as a rival entertainment
to the house lamps inside for some of the best insect society in
Africa, who after the manner of the insect world, insist on
regarding us as responsible for their own idiocy in getting singed;
and sting us in revenge, while we slap hard, as we howl hymns in the
fearful Igalwa and M'pongwe way. Next to an English picnic, the
most uncomfortable thing I know is an open-air service in this part
of Africa. Service being over, Ndaka takes me over the house to
show its splendours. The great brilliancy of its illumination
arises from its being lit by two hanging lamps burning paraffin oil.
The most remarkable point about the house is the floor, which is
made of split, plaited bamboo. It gives under your feet in an
alarming way, being raised some three or four feet above the ground,
and I am haunted by the fear that I shall go through it and give
pain to myself, and great trouble to others before I could be got
out. It is a beautiful piece of workmanship, and Arevooma has every
reason to be proud of it. Having admired these things, I go, dead
tired and still headachy, down the road with my host who carries the
lantern, through an atmosphere that has 45 per cent. of solid matter
in the shape of mosquitoes; then wishing him good-night, I shut
myself in, and illuminate, humbly, with a candle. The furniture of
the house consists mainly of boxes, containing the wealth of Gray
Shirt, in clothes, mirrors, etc. One corner of the room is taken up
by great calabashes full of some sort of liquor, and there is an
ivory bundle chair, a hanging mirror, several rusty guns, and a
considerable collection of china basins and jugs. Evidently Gray
Shirt is rich. The most interesting article to me, however, just
now is the bed hung over with a clean, substantial, chintz mosquito
bar, and spread with clean calico and adorned with patchwork-covered
pillows. So I take off my boots and put on my slippers; for it
never does in this country to leave off boots altogether at anytime
and risk getting bitten by mosquitoes on the feet, when you are on
the march; because the rub of your boot on the bite always produces
a sore, and a sore when it comes in the Gorilla country, comes to
stay.
No sooner have I carefully swished all the mosquitoes from under the
bar and turned in, than a cat scratches and mews at the door--turn
out and let her in. She is evidently a pet, so I take her on to the
bed with me. She is a very nice cat--sandy and fat--and if I held
the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl, I should have no
hesitation in saying she had in her the soul of Dame Juliana
Berners, such a whole-souled devotion to sport does she display,
dashing out through the flaps of the mosquito bar after rats which,
amid squeals from the rats and curses from her, she kills amongst
the china collection. Then she comes to me, triumphant, expecting
congratulations, and accompanied by mosquitoes, and purrs and kneads
upon my chest until she hears another rat.
Tuesday, July 23rd.--Am aroused by violent knocking at the door in
the early gray dawn--so violent that two large centipedes and a
scorpion drop on to the bed. They have evidently been tucked away
among the folds of the bar all night. Well "when ignorance is bliss
'tis folly to be wise," particularly along here. I get up without
delay, and find myself quite well. The cat has thrown a basin of
water neatly over into my bag during her nocturnal hunts; and when
my tea comes I am informed a man "done die" in the night, which
explains the firing of guns I heard. I inquire what he has died of,
and am told "He just truck luck, and then he die." His widows are
having their faces painted white by sympathetic lady friends, and
are attired in their oldest, dirtiest clothes, and but very few of
them; still, they seem to be taking things in a resigned spirit.
These Ajumba seem pleasant folk. They play with their pretty brown
children in a taking way. Last night I noticed some men and women
playing a game new to me, which consisted in throwing a hoop at each
other. The point was to get the hoop to fall over your adversary's
head. It is a cheerful game. Quantities of the common house-fly
about--and, during the early part of the morning, it rains in a
gentle kind of way; but soon after we are afloat in our canoe it
turns into a soft white mist.
We paddle still westwards down the broad quiet waters of the O'Rembo
Vongo. I notice great quantities of birds about here--great
hornbills, vividly coloured kingfishers, and for the first time the
great vulture I have often heard of, and the skin of which I will
take home before I mention even its approximate spread of wing.
There are also noble white cranes, and flocks of small black and
white birds, new to me, with heavy razor-shaped bills, reminding one
of the Devonian puffin. The hornbill is perhaps the most striking
in appearance. It is the size of a small, or say a good-sized hen
turkey. Gray Shirt says the flocks, which are of eight or ten,
always have the same quantity of cocks and hens, and that they live
together "white man fashion," i.e. each couple keeping together.
They certainly do a great deal of courting, the cock filling out his
wattles on his neck like a turkey, and spreading out his tail with
great pomp and ceremony, but very awkwardly. To see hornbills on a
bare sandbank is a solemn sight, but when they are dodging about in
the hippo grass they sink ceremony, and roll and waddle, looking--my
man said--for snakes and the little sand-fish, which are close in
under the bank; and their killing way of dropping their jaws--I
should say opening their bills--when they are alarmed is comic. I
think this has something to do with their hearing, for I often saw
two or three of them in a line on a long branch, standing, stretched
up to their full height, their great eyes opened wide, and all with
their great beaks open, evidently listening for something. Their
cry is most peculiar and can only be mistaken for a native horn; and
although there seems little variety in it to my ear, there must be
more to theirs, for they will carry on long confabulations with each
other across a river, and, I believe, sit up half the night and talk
scandal.
There were plenty of plantain-eaters here, but, although their
screech was as appalling as I have heard in Angola, they were not
regarded, by the Ajumba at any rate, as being birds of evil omen, as
they are in Angola. Still, by no means all the birds here only
screech and squark. Several of them have very lovely notes. There
is one who always gives a series of infinitely beautiful, soft,
rich-toned whistles just before the first light of the dawn shows in
the sky, and one at least who has a prolonged and very lovely song.
This bird, I was told in Gaboon, is called Telephonus erythropterus.
I expect an ornithologist would enjoy himself here, but I cannot--
and will not--collect birds. I hate to have them killed any how,
and particularly in the barbarous way in which these natives kill
them.
The broad stretch of water looks like a long lake. In all
directions sandbanks are showing their broad yellow backs, and there
will be more showing soon, for it is not yet the height of the dry.
We are perpetually grounding on those which by next month will be
above water. These canoes are built, I believe, more with a view to
taking sandbanks comfortably than anything else; but they are by no
means yet sufficiently specialised for getting off them. Their flat
bottoms enable them to glide on to the banks, and sit there, without
either upsetting or cutting into the sand, as a canoe with a keel
would; but the trouble comes in when you are getting off the steep
edge of the bank, and the usual form it takes is upsetting. So far
my Ajumba friends have only tried to meet this difficulty by tying
the cargo in.
I try to get up the geography of this region conscientiously.
Fortunately I find Gray Shirt, Singlet, and Pagan can speak trade
English. None of them, however, seem to recognise a single blessed
name on the chart, which is saying nothing against the chart and its
makers, who probably got their names up from M'pongwes and Igalwas
instead of Ajumba, as I am trying to. Geographical research in this
region is fraught with difficulty, I find, owing to different tribes
calling one and the same place by different names; and I am sure the
Royal Geographical Society ought to insert among their "Hints" that
every traveller in this region should carefully learn every separate
native word, or set of words, signifying "I don't know,"--four
villages and two rivers I have come across out here solemnly set
down with various forms of this statement, for their native name.
Really I think the old Portuguese way of naming places after Saints,
etc., was wiser in the long run, and it was certainly pleasanter to
the ear. My Ajumba, however, know about my Ngambi and the Vinue all
right and Eliva z'Ayzingo, so I must try and get cross bearings from
these.
We have an addition to our crew this morning--a man who wants to go
and get work at John Holt's sub-factory away on the Rembwe. He has
been waiting a long while at Arevooma, unable to get across, I am
told, because the road is now stopped between Ayzingo and the Rembwe
by "those fearful Fans." "How are we going to get through that
way?" says I, with natural feminine alarm. "We are not, sir," says
Gray Shirt. This is what Lady MacDonald would term a chatty little
incident; and my hair begins to rise as I remember what I have been
told about those Fans and the indications I have already seen of its
being true when on the Upper Ogowe. Now here we are going to try to
get through the heart of their country, far from a French station,
and without the French flag. Why did I not obey Mr. Hudson's orders
not to go wandering about in a reckless way! Anyhow I am in for it,
and Fortune favours the brave. The only question is: Do I
individually come under this class? I go into details. It seems
Pagan thinks he can depend on the friendship of two Fans he once met
and did business with, and who now live on an island in Lake Ncovi--
Ncovi is not down on my map and I have never heard of it before--
anyhow thither we are bound now.
Each man has brought with him his best gun, loaded to the muzzle,
and tied on to the baggage against which I am leaning--the muzzles
sticking out each side of my head: the flint locks covered with
cases, or sheaths, made of the black-haired skins of gorillas,
leopard skin, and a beautiful bright bay skin, which I do not know,
which they say is bush cow--but they call half a dozen things bush
cow. These guns are not the "gas-pipes" I have seen up north; but
decent rifles which have had the rifling filed out and the locks
replaced by flint locks and converted into muzzle loaders, and many
of them have beautiful barrels. I find the Ajumba name for the
beautiful shrub that has long bunches of red, yellow and cream-
coloured young leaves at the end of its branches is "obaa." I also
learn that in their language ebony and a monkey have one name. The
forest on either bank is very lovely. Some enormously high columns
of green are formed by a sort of climbing plant having taken
possession of lightning-struck trees, and in one place it really
looks exactly as if some one had spread a great green coverlet over
the forest, so as to keep it dry. No high land showing in any
direction. Pagan tells me the extinguisher-shaped juju filled with
medicine and made of iron is against drowning--the red juju is "for
keep foot in path." Beautiful effect of a gleam of sunshine
lighting up a red sandbank till it glows like the Nibelungen gold.
Indeed the effects are Turneresque to-day owing to the mist, and the
sun playing in and out among it.
The sandbanks now have their cliffs to the N.N.W. and N.W. At 9.30,
the broad river in front of us is apparently closed by sandbanks
which run out from the banks thus: -
yellow}
S. bank bright-red} N. bank.
yellow}
Current running strong along south bank. This bank bears testimony
of this also being the case in the wet season, for a fringe of torn-
down trees hangs from it into the river. Pass Seke, a town on north
bank, interchanging the usual observations regarding our
destination. The river seems absolutely barred with sand again; but
as we paddle down it, the obstructions resolve themselves into spits
of sand from the north bank and the largest island in mid-stream,
which also has a long tail, or train, of sandbank down river. Here
we meet a picturesque series of canoes, fruit and trade laden, being
poled up stream, one man with his pole over one side, the other with
his pole over the other, making a St. Andrew's cross as you meet
them end on.
Most luxurious, charming, and pleasant trip this. The men are
standing up swinging in rhythmic motion their long, rich red wood
paddles in perfect time to their elaborate melancholy, minor key
boat song. Nearly lost with all hands. Sandbank palaver--only when
we were going over the end of it, the canoe slips sideways over its
edge. River deep, bottom sand and mud. This information may be
interesting to the geologist, but I hope I shall not be converted by
circumstances into a human sounding apparatus again to-day. Next
time she strikes I shall get out and shove behind.
We are now skirting the real north bank, and not the bank of an
island or islands as we have been for some time heretofore. Lovely
stream falls into this river over cascades. The water is now rough
in a small way and the width of the river great, but it soon is
crowded again with wooded islands. There are patches and wreaths of
a lovely, vermilion-flowering bush rope decorating the forest, and
now and again clumps of a plant that shows a yellow and crimson
spike of bloom, very strikingly beautiful. We pass a long tunnel in
the bush, quite dark as you look down it--evidently the path to some
native town. The south bank is covered, where the falling waters
have exposed it, with hippo grass. Terrible lot of mangrove flies
about, although we are more than one hundred miles above the
mangrove belt. River broad again--tending W.S.W., with a broad
flattened island with attributive sandbanks in the middle. The fair
way is along the south bank of the river. Gray Shirt tells me this
river is called the O'Rembo Vongo, or small River, so as to
distinguish it from the main stream of the Ogowe which goes down
past the south side of Lembarene Island, as well I know after that
canoe affair of mine. Ayzingo now bears due north--and native
mahogany is called "Okooma." Pass village called Welli on north
bank. It looks like some gipsy caravans stuck on poles. I expect
that village has known what it means to be swamped by the rising
river; it looks as if it had, very hastily in the middle of some
night, taken to stilts, which I am sure, from their present rickety
condition, will not last through the next wet season, and then some
unfortunate spirit will get the blame of the collapse. I also learn
that it is the natal spot of my friend Kabinda, the carpenter at
Andande. Now if some of these good people I know would only go and
distinguish themselves, I might write a sort of county family
history of these parts; but they don't, and I fancy won't. For
example, the entrance--or should I say the exit?--of a broadish
little river is just away on the south bank. If you go up this
river--it runs S.E.--you get to a good-sized lake; in this lake
there is an island called Adole; then out of the other side of the
lake there is another river which falls into the Ogowe main stream--
but that is not the point of the story, which is that on that island
of Adole, Ngouta, the interpreter, first saw the light. Why he ever
did--there or anywhere--Heaven only knows! I know I shall never
want to write his biography.
On the western bank end of that river going to Adole, there is an
Igalwa town, notable for a large quantity of fine white ducks and a
clump of Indian bamboo. My informants say, "No white man ever live
for this place," so I suppose the ducks and bamboo have been
imported by some black trader whose natal spot this is. The name of
this village is Wanderegwoma. Stuck on sandbank--I flew out and
shoved behind, leaving Ngouta to do the balancing performances in
the stern. This O'Rembo Vongo divides up just below here, I am
told, when we have re-embarked, into three streams. One goes into
the main Ogowe opposite Ayshouka in Nkami country--Nkami country
commences at Ayshouka and goes to the sea--one into the Ngumbi, and
one into the Nunghi--all in the Ouroungou country. Ayzingo now lies
N.E. according to Gray Shirt's arm. On our river there is here
another broad low island with its gold-coloured banks shining out,
seemingly barring the entire channel, but there is really a canoe
channel along by both banks.
We turn at this point into a river on the north bank that runs north
and south--the current is running very swift to the north. We run
down into it, and then, it being more than time enough for chop, we
push the canoe on to a sandbank in our new river, which I am told is
the Karkola. I, after having had my tea, wander off, and find
behind our high sandbank, which like all the other sandbanks above
water now, is getting grown over with hippo grass--a fine light
green grass, the beloved food of both hippo and manatee--a forest,
and entering this I notice a succession of strange mounds or heaps,
made up of branches, twigs, and leaves, and dead flowers. Many of
these heaps are recent, while others have fallen into decay.
Investigation shows they are burial places. Among the debris of an
old one there are human bones, and out from one of the new ones
comes a stench and a hurrying, exceedingly busy line of ants,
demonstrating what is going on. I own I thought these mounds were
some kind of bird's or animal's nest. They look entirely unhuman in
this desolate reach of forest. Leaving these, I go down to the
water edge of the sand, and find in it a quantity of pools of
varying breadth and expanse, but each surrounded by a rim of dark
red-brown deposit, which you can lift off the sand in a skin. On
the top of the water is a film of exquisite iridescent colours like
those on a soap bubble, only darker and brighter. In the river
alongside the sand, there are thousands of those beautiful little
fish with a black line each side of their tails. They are perfectly
tame, and I feed them with crumbs in my hand. After making every
effort to terrify the unknown object containing the food--gallant
bulls, quite two inches long, sidling up and snapping at my fingers-
-they come and feed right in the palm, so that I could have caught
them by the handful had I wished. There are also a lot of those
weird, semi-transparent, yellow, spotted little sandfish with cup-
shaped pectoral fins, which I see they use to enable them to make
their astoundingly long leaps. These fish are of a more nervous and
distrustful disposition, and hover round my hand but will not come
into it. Indeed I do not believe the other cheeky little fellows
would allow them to.
The men, having had their rest and their pipes, shout for me, and
off we go again. The Karkola {181} soon widens to about 100 feet;
it is evidently very deep here; the right bank (the east) is
forested, the left, low and shrubbed, one patch looking as if it
were being cleared for a plantation, but no village showing. A big
rock shows up on the right bank, which is a change from the clay and
sand, and soon the whole character of the landscape changes. We
come to a sharp turn in the river, from north and south to east and
west--the current very swift. The river channel dodges round
against a big bank of sword grass, and then widens out to the
breadth of the Thames at Putney. I am told that a river runs out of
it here to the west to Ouroungou country, and so I imagine this
Karkola falls ultimately into the Nazareth. We skirt the eastern
banks, which are covered with low grass with a scanty lot of trees
along the top. High land shows in the distance to the S.S.W. and
S.W., and then we suddenly turn up into a broad river or straith,
shaping our course N.N.E. On the opposite bank, on a high dwarf
cliff, is a Fan town. "All Fan now," says Singlet in anything but a
gratified tone of voice.
It is a strange, wild, lonely bit of the world we are now in,
apparently a lake or broad--full of sandbanks, some bare and some in
the course of developing into permanent islands by the growth on
them of that floating coarse grass, any joint of which being torn
off either by the current, a passing canoe, or hippos, floats down
and grows wherever it settles. Like most things that float in these
parts, it usually settles on a sandbank, and then grows in much the
same way as our couch grass grows on land in England, so as to form
a network, which catches for its adopted sandbank all sorts of
floating debris; so the sandbank comes up in the world. The waters
of the wet season when they rise drown off the grass; but when they
fall, up it comes again from the root, and so gradually the sandbank
becomes an island and persuades real trees and shrubs to come and
grow on it, and its future is then secured.
We skirt alongside a great young island of this class; the sword
grass some ten or fifteen feet high. It has not got any trees on it
yet, but by next season or so it doubtless will have. The grass is
stabbled down into paths by hippos, and just as I have realised who
are the road-makers, they appear in person. One immense fellow,
hearing us, stands up and shows himself about six feet from us in
the grass, gazes calmly, and then yawns a yawn a yard wide and
grunts his news to his companions, some of whom--there is evidently
a large herd--get up and stroll towards us with all the flowing
grace of Pantechnicon vans in motion. We put our helm paddles hard
a starboard and leave that bank.
Our hasty trip across to the bank of the island on the other side
being accomplished, we, in search of seclusion and in the hope that
out of sight would mean out of mind to hippos, shot down a narrow
channel between semi-island sandbanks, and those sandbanks, if you
please, are covered with specimens--as fine a set of specimens as
you could wish for--of the West African crocodile. These
interesting animals are also having their siestas, lying sprawling
in all directions on the sand, with their mouths wide open. One
immense old lady has a family of lively young crocodiles running
over her, evidently playing like a lot of kittens. The heavy musky
smell they give off is most repulsive, but we do not rise up and
make a row about this, because we feel hopelessly in the wrong in
intruding into these family scenes uninvited, and so apologetically
pole ourselves along rapidly, not even singing. The pace the canoe
goes down that channel would be a wonder to Henley Regatta. When
out of ear-shot I ask Pagan whether there are many gorillas,
elephants, or bush cows round here. "Plenty too much," says he; and
it occurs to me that the corn-fields are growing golden green away
in England; and soon there rises up in my mental vision a picture
that fascinated my youth in the Fliegende Blatter, representing
"Friedrich Gerstaeker auf der Reise." That gallant man is depicted
tramping on a serpent, new to M. Boulenger, while he attempts to
club, with the butt end of his gun, a most lively savage who,
accompanied by a bison, is attacking him in front. A terrific and
obviously enthusiastic crocodile is grabbing the tail of the
explorer's coat, and the explorer says "Hurrah! das gibt wieder
einen prachtigen Artikel fur Die Allgemeine Zeitung." I do not know
where in the world Gerstaeker was at the time, but I should fancy
hereabouts. My vigorous and lively conscience also reminds me that
the last words a most distinguished and valued scientific friend had
said to me before I left home was, "Always take measurements, Miss
Kingsley, and always take them from the adult male." I know I have
neglected opportunities of carrying this commission out on both
those banks, but I do not feel like going back. Besides, the men
would not like it, and I have mislaid my yard measure.
The extent of water, dotted with sandbanks and islands in all
directions, here is great, and seems to be fringed uniformly by low
swampy land, beyond which, to the north, rounded lumps of hills show
blue. On one of the islands is a little white house which I am told
was once occupied by a black trader for John Holt. It looks a
desolate place for any man to live in, and the way the crocodiles
and hippo must have come up on the garden ground in the evening time
could not have enhanced its charms to the average cautious man. My
men say, "No man live for that place now." The factory, I believe,
has been, for some trade reason, abandoned. Behind it is a great
clump of dark-coloured trees. The rest of the island is now covered
with hippo grass looking like a beautifully kept lawn. We lie up
for a short rest at another island, also a weird spot in its way,
for it is covered with a grove of only one kind of tree, which has a
twisted, contorted, gray-white trunk and dull, lifeless-looking,
green, hard foliage.
I learn that these good people, to make topographical confusion
worse confounded, call a river by one name when you are going up it,
and by another when you are coming down; just as if you called the
Thames the London when you were going up, and the Greenwich when you
were coming down. The banks all round this lake or broad, seem all
light-coloured sand and clay. We pass out of it into a channel.
Current flowing north. As we are entering the channel between banks
of grass-overgrown sand, a superb white crane is seen standing on
the sand edge to the left. Gray Shirt attempts to get a shot at it,
but it--alarmed at our unusual appearance--raises itself up with one
of those graceful preliminary curtseys, and after one or two
preliminary flaps spreads its broad wings and sweeps away, with its
long legs trailing behind it like a thing on a Japanese screen.
The river into which we ran zigzags about, and then takes a course
S.S.E. It is studded with islands slightly higher than those we
have passed, and thinly clad with forest. The place seems alive
with birds; flocks of pelican and crane rise up before us out of the
grass, and every now and then a crocodile slides off the bank into
the water. Wonderfully like old logs they look, particularly when
you see one letting himself roll and float down on the current. In
spite of these interests I began to wonder where in this lonely land
we were to sleep to-night. In front of us were miles of distant
mountains, but in no direction the slightest sign of human
habitation. Soon we passed out of our channel into a lovely,
strangely melancholy, lonely-looking lake--Lake Ncovi, my friends
tell me. It is exceedingly beautiful. The rich golden sunlight of
the late afternoon soon followed by the short-lived, glorious
flushes of colour of the sunset and the after-glow, play over the
scene as we paddle across the lake to the N.N.E.--our canoe leaving
a long trail of frosted silver behind her as she glides over the
mirror-like water, and each stroke of the paddle sending down air
with it to come up again in luminous silver bubbles--not as before
in swirls of sand and mud. The lake shore is, in all directions,
wreathed with nobly forested hills, indigo and purple in the dying
daylight. On the N.N.E. and N.E. these come directly down into the
lake; on N.W., N., S.W., and S.E. there is a band of well-forested
ground, behind which they rise. In the north and north-eastern part
of the lake several exceedingly beautiful wooded islands show, with
gray rocky beaches and dwarf cliffs.
Sign of human habitation at first there was none; and in spite of
its beauty, there was something which I was almost going to say was
repulsive. The men evidently felt the same as I did. Had any one
told me that the air that lay on the lake was poison, or that in
among its forests lay some path to regions of utter death, I should
have said--"It looks like that"; but no one said anything, and we
only looked round uneasily, until the comfortable-souled Singlet
made the unfortunate observation that he "smelt blood." {185} We
all called him an utter fool to relieve our minds, and made our way
towards the second island. When we got near enough to it to see
details, a large village showed among the trees on its summit, and a
steep dwarf cliff, overgrown with trees and creeping plants came
down to a small beach covered with large water-washed gray stones.
There was evidently some kind of a row going on in that village,
that took a lot of shouting too. We made straight for the beach,
and drove our canoe among its outlying rocks, and then each of my
men stowed his paddle quickly, slung on his ammunition bag, and
picked up his ready loaded gun, sliding the skin sheath off the
lock. Pagan got out on to the stones alongside the canoe just as
the inhabitants became aware of our arrival, and, abandoning what I
hope was a mass meeting to remonstrate with the local authorities on
the insanitary state of the town, came--a brown mass of naked
humanity--down the steep cliff path to attend to us, whom they
evidently regarded as an Imperial interest. Things did not look
restful, nor these Fans personally pleasant. Every man among them--
no women showed--was armed with a gun, and they loosened their
shovel-shaped knives in their sheaths as they came, evidently
regarding a fight quite as imminent as we did. They drew up about
twenty paces from us in silence. Pagan and Gray Shirt, who had
joined him, held out their unembarrassed hands, and shouted out the
name of the Fan man they had said they were friendly with: "Kiva-
Kiva." The Fans stood still and talked angrily among themselves for
some minutes, and then, Silence said to me, "It would be bad palaver
if Kiva no live for this place," in a tone that conveyed to me the
idea he thought this unpleasant contingency almost a certainty. The
Passenger exhibited unmistakable symptoms of wishing he had come by
another boat. I got up from my seat in the bottom of the canoe and
leisurely strolled ashore, saying to the line of angry faces
"M'boloani" in an unconcerned way, although I well knew it was
etiquette for them to salute first. They grunted, but did not
commit themselves further. A minute after they parted to allow a
fine-looking, middle-aged man, naked save for a twist of dirty cloth
round his loins and a bunch of leopard and wild cat tails hung from
his shoulder by a strip of leopard skin, to come forward. Pagan
went for him with a rush, as if he were going to clasp him to his
ample bosom, but holding his hands just off from touching the Fan's
shoulder in the usual way, while he said in Fan, "Don't you know me,
my beloved Kiva? Surely you have not forgotten your old friend?"
Kiva grunted feelingly, and raised up his hands and held them just
off touching Pagan, and we breathed again. Then Gray Shirt made a
rush at the crowd and went through great demonstrations of affection
with another gentleman whom he recognised as being a Fan friend of
his own, and whom he had not expected to meet here. I looked round
to see if there was not any Fan from the Upper Ogowe whom I knew to
go for, but could not see one that I could on the strength of a
previous acquaintance, and on their individual merits I did not feel
inclined to do even this fashionable imitation embrace. Indeed I
must say that never--even in a picture book--have I seen such a set
of wild wicked-looking savages as those we faced this night, and
with whom it was touch-and-go for twenty of the longest minutes I
have ever lived, whether we fought--for our lives, I was going to
say, but it would not have been even for that, but merely for the
price of them.
Peace having been proclaimed, conversation became general. Gray
Shirt brought his friend up and introduced him to me, and we shook
hands and smiled at each other in the conventional way. Pagan's
friend, who was next introduced, was more alarming, for he held his
hands for half a minute just above my elbows without quite touching
me, but he meant well; and then we all disappeared into a brown mass
of humanity and a fog of noise. You would have thought, from the
violence and vehemence of the shouting and gesticulation, that we
were going to be forthwith torn to shreds; but not a single hand
really touched me, and as I, Pagan, and Gray Shirt went up to the
town in the midst of the throng, the crowd opened in front and
closed in behind, evidently half frightened at my appearance. The
row when we reached the town redoubled in volume from the fact that
the ladies, the children, and the dogs joined in. Every child in
the place as soon as it saw my white face let a howl out of it as if
it had seen his Satanic Majesty, horns, hoofs, tail and all, and
fled into the nearest hut, headlong, and I fear, from the
continuance of the screams, had fits. The town was exceedingly
filthy--the remains of the crocodile they had been eating the week
before last, and piles of fish offal, and remains of an elephant,
hippo or manatee--I really can't say which, decomposition was too
far advanced--united to form a most impressive stench. The bark
huts are, as usual in a Fan town, in unbroken rows; but there are
three or four streets here, not one only, as in most cases. The
palaver house is in the innermost street, and there we went, and
noticed that the village view was not in the direction in which we
had come, but across towards the other side of the lake. I told the
Ajumba to explain we wanted hospitality for the night, and wished to
hire three carriers for to-morrow to go with us to the Rembwe.
For an hour and three-quarters by my watch I stood in the
suffocating, smoky, hot atmosphere listening to, but only faintly
understanding, the war of words and gesture that raged round us. At
last the fact that we were to be received being settled, Gray
Shirt's friend led us out of the guard house--the crowd flinching
back as I came through it--to his own house on the right-hand side
of the street of huts. It was a very different dwelling to Gray
Shirt's residence at Arevooma. I was as high as its roof ridge and
had to stoop low to get through the door-hole. Inside, the hut was
fourteen or fifteen feet square, unlit by any window. The door-hole
could be closed by pushing a broad piece of bark across it under two
horizontally fixed bits of stick. The floor was sand like the
street outside, but dirtier. On it in one place was a fire, whose
smoke found its way out through the roof. In one corner of the room
was a rough bench of wood, which from the few filthy cloths on it
and a wood pillow I saw was the bed. There was no other furniture
in the hut save some boxes, which I presume held my host's earthly
possessions. From the bamboo roof hung a long stick with hooks on
it, the hooks made by cutting off branching twigs. This was
evidently the hanging wardrobe, and on it hung some few fetish
charms, and a beautiful ornament of wild cat and leopard tails, tied
on to a square piece of leopard skin, in the centre of which was a
little mirror, and round the mirror were sewn dozens of common shirt
buttons. In among the tails hung three little brass bells and a
brass rattle; these bells and rattles are not only "for dandy," but
serve to scare away snakes when the ornament is worn in the forest.
A fine strip of silky-haired, young gorilla skin made the band to
sling the ornament from the shoulder when worn. Gorillas seem well
enough known round here. One old lady in the crowd outside, I saw,
had a necklace made of sixteen gorilla canine teeth slung on a pine-
apple fibre string. Gray Shirt explained to me that this is the
best house in the village, and my host the most renowned elephant
hunter in the district.
We then returned to the canoe, whose occupants had been getting
uneasy about the way affairs were going "on top," on account of the
uproar they heard and the time we had been away. We got into the
canoe and took her round the little promontory at the end of the
island to the other beach, which is the main beach. By arriving at
the beach when we did, we took our Fan friends in the rear, and they
did not see us coming in the gloaming. This was all for the best,
it seems, as they said they should have fired on us before they had
had time to see we were rank outsiders, on the apprehension that we
were coming from one of the Fan towns we had passed, and with whom
they were on bad terms regarding a lady who bolted there from her
lawful lord, taking with her--cautious soul!--a quantity of rubber.
The only white man who had been here before in the memory of man,
was a French officer who paid Kiva six dollars to take him
somewhere, I was told--but I could not find out when, or what
happened to that Frenchman. {189} It was a long time ago, Kiva
said, but these folks have no definite way of expressing duration of
time nor, do I believe, any great mental idea of it; although their
ideas are, as usual with West Africans, far ahead of their language.
All the goods were brought up to my hut, and while Ngouta gets my
tea we started talking the carrier palaver again. The Fans received
my offer, starting at two dollars ahead of what M. Jacot said would
be enough, with utter scorn, and every dramatic gesture of dissent;
one man, pretending to catch Gray Shirt's words in his hands, flings
them to the ground and stamps them under his feet. I affected an
easy take-it-or-leave-it-manner, and looked on. A woman came out of
the crowd to me, and held out a mass of slimy gray abomination on a
bit of plantain leaf--smashed snail. I accepted it and gave her
fish hooks. She was delighted and her companions excited, so she
put the hooks into her mouth for safe keeping. I hurriedly
explained in my best Fan that I do not require any more snail; so
another lady tried the effect of a pine-apple. There might be no
end to this, so I retired into trade and asked what she would sell
it for. She did not want to sell it--she wanted to give it me; so I
gave her fish hooks. Silence and Singlet interposed, saying the
price for pine-apples is one leaf of tobacco, but I explained I was
not buying. Ngouta turned up with my tea, so I went inside, and had
it on the bed. The door-hole was entirely filled with a mosaic of
faces, but no one attempted to come in. All the time the carrier
palaver went on without cessation, and I went out and offered to
take Gray Shirt's and Pagan's place, knowing they must want their
chop, but they refused relief, and also said I must not raise the
price; I was offering too big a price now, and if I once rise the
Fan will only think I will keep on rising, and so make the palaver
longer to talk. "How long does a palaver usually take to talk round
here?" I ask. "The last one I talked," says Pagan, "took three
weeks, and that was only a small price palaver." "Well," say I, "my
price is for a start to-morrow--after then I have no price--after
that I go away." Another hour however sees the jam made, and to my
surprise I find the three richest men in this town of M'fetta have
personally taken up the contract--Kiva my host, Fika a fine young
fellow, and Wiki, another noted elephant hunter. These three Fans,
the four Ajumba and the Igalwa, Ngouta, I think will be enough.
Moreover I fancy it safer not to have an overpowering percentage of
Fans in the party, as I know we shall have considerable stretches of
uninhabited forest to traverse; and the Ajumba say that the Fans
will kill people, i.e. the black traders who venture into their
country, and cut them up into neat pieces, eat what they want at the
time, and smoke the rest of the bodies for future use. Now I do not
want to arrive at the Rembwe in a smoked condition, even should my
fragments be neat, and I am going in a different direction to what I
said I was when leaving Kangwe, and there are so many ways of
accounting for death about here--leopard, canoe capsize, elephants,
etc.--that even if I were traced--well, nothing could be done then,
anyhow--so will only take three Fans. One must diminish dead
certainties to the level of sporting chances along here, or one can
never get on.
No one, either Ajumba or Fan, knew the exact course we were to take.
The Ajumba had never been this way before--the way for black traders
across being via Lake Ayzingo, the way Mr. Goode of the American
Mission once went, and the Fans said they only knew the way to a big
Fan town called Efoua, where no white man or black trader had yet
been. There is a path from there to the Rembwe they knew, because
the Efoua people take their trade all to the Rembwe. They would,
they said, come with me all the way if I would guarantee them safety
if they "found war" on the road. This I agreed to do, and arranged
to pay off at Hatton and Cookson's subfactory on the Rembwe, and
they have "Look my mouth and it be sweet, so palaver done set."
Every load then, by the light of the bush lights held by the women,
we arranged. I had to unpack my bottles of fishes so as to equalise
the weight of the loads. Every load is then made into a sort of
cocoon with bush rope.
I was left in peace at about 11.30 P.M., and clearing off the
clothes from the bench threw myself down and tried to get some
sleep, for we were to start, the Fans said, before dawn. Sleep
impossible--mosquitoes! lice!!--so at 12.40 I got up and slid aside
my bark door. I found Pagan asleep under his mosquito bar outside,
across the doorway, but managed to get past him without rousing him
from his dreams of palaver which he was still talking aloud, and
reconnoitred the town. The inhabitants seemed to have talked
themselves quite out and were sleeping heavily. I went down then to
our canoe and found it safe, high up among the Fan canoes on the
stones, and then I slid a small Fan canoe off, and taking a paddle
from a cluster stuck in the sand, paddled out on to the dark lake.
It was a wonderfully lovely quiet night with no light save that from
the stars. One immense planet shone pre-eminent in the purple sky,
throwing a golden path down on to the still waters. Quantities of
big fish sprung out of the water, their glistening silver-white
scales flashing so that they look like slashing swords. Some bird
was making a long, low boom-booming sound away on the forest shore.
I paddled leisurely across the lake to the shore on the right, and
seeing crawling on the ground some large glow-worms, drove the canoe
on to the bank among some hippo grass, and got out to get them.
While engaged on this hunt I felt the earth quiver under my feet,
and heard a soft big soughing sound, and looking round saw I had
dropped in on a hippo banquet. I made out five of the immense
brutes round me, so I softly returned to the canoe and shoved off,
stealing along the bank, paddling under water, until I deemed it
safe to run out across the lake for my island. I reached the other
end of it to that on which the village is situated; and finding a
miniature rocky bay with a soft patch of sand and no hippo grass,
the incidents of the Fan hut suggested the advisability of a bath.
Moreover, there was no china collection in that hut, and it would be
a long time before I got another chance, so I go ashore again, and,
carefully investigating the neighbourhood to make certain there was
no human habitation near, I then indulged in a wash in peace.
Drying one's self on one's cummerbund is not pure joy, but it can be
done when you put your mind to it. While I was finishing my toilet
I saw a strange thing happen. Down through the forest on the lake
bank opposite came a violet ball the size of a small orange. When
it reached the sand beach it hovered along it to and fro close to
the ground. In a few minutes another ball of similarly coloured
light came towards it from behind one of the islets, and the two
waver to and fro over the beach, sometimes circling round each
other. I made off towards them in the canoe, thinking--as I still
do--they were some brand new kind of luminous insect. When I got on
to their beach one of them went off into the bushes and the other
away over the water. I followed in the canoe, for the water here is
very deep, and, when I almost thought I had got it, it went down
into the water and I could see it glowing as it sunk until it
vanished in the depths. I made my way back hastily, fearing my
absence with the canoe might give rise, if discovered, to trouble,
and by 3.30 I was back in the hut safe, but not so comfortable as I
had been on the lake. A little before five my men are stirring and
I get my tea. I do not state my escapade to them, but ask what
those lights were. "Akom," said the Fan, and pointing to the shore
of the lake where I had been during the night they said, "they came
there, it was an 'Aku'"--or devil bush. More than ever did I regret
not having secured one of those sort of two phenomena. What a joy a
real devil, appropriately put up in raw alcohol, would have been to
my scientific friends!
Wednesday, July 24th.--We get away about 5.30, the Fans coming in a
separate canoe. We call at the next island to M'fetta to buy some
more aguma. The inhabitants are very much interested in my
appearance, running along the stony beach as we paddle away, and
standing at the end of it until we are out of sight among the many
islands at the N.E. end of Lake Ncovi. The scenery is savage; there
are no terrific cliffs nor towering mountains to make it what one
usually calls wild or romantic, but there is a distinction about it
which is all its own. This N.E. end has beautiful sand beaches on
the southern side, in front of the forested bank, lying in smooth
ribbons along the level shore, and in scollops round the
promontories where the hills come down into the lake. The forest on
these hills, or mountains--for they are part of the Sierra del
Cristal--is very dark in colour, and the undergrowth seems scant.
We presently come to a narrow but deep channel into the lake coming
from the eastward, which we go up, winding our course with it into a
valley between the hills. After going up it a little way we find it
completely fenced across with stout stakes, a space being left open
in the middle, broader than the spaces between the other stakes; and
over this is poised a spear with a bush rope attached, and weighted
at the top of the haft with a great lump of rock. The whole affair
is kept in position by a bush rope so arranged just under the level
of the water that anything passing through the opening would bring
the spear down. This was a trap for hippo or manatee (Ngany
'imanga), and similar in structure to those one sees set in the
hippo grass near villages and plantations, which serve the double
purpose of defending the vegetable supply, and adding to the meat
supply of the inhabitants. We squeeze through between the stakes so
as not to let the trap off, and find our little river leads us into
another lake, much smaller than Ncovi. It is studded with islands
of fantastic shapes, all wooded with high trees of an equal level,
and with little or no undergrowth among them, so their pale gray
stems look like clusters of columns supporting a dark green ceiling.
The forest comes down steep hill sides to the water edge in all
directions; and a dark gloomy-looking herb grows up out of black
slime and water, in a bank or ribbon in front of it. There is
another channel out of this lake, still to the N.E. The Fans say
they think it goes into the big lake far far away, i.e., Lake
Ayzingo. From the look of the land, I think this river connecting
Ayzingo and Lake Ncovi wanders down this valley between the mountain
spurs of the Sierra del Cristal, expanding into one gloomy lake
after another. We run our canoe into a bank of the dank dark-
coloured water herb to the right, and disembark into a fitting
introduction to the sort of country we shall have to deal with
before we see the Rembwe--namely, up to our knees in black slime.
CHAPTER VIII. FROM NCOVI TO ESOON.
Concerning the way in which the voyager goes from the island of
M'fetta to no one knows exactly where, in doubtful and bad company,
and of what this led to and giving also some accounts of the Great
Forest and of those people that live therein.
I will not bore you with my diary in detail regarding our land
journey, because the water-washed little volume attributive to this
period is mainly full of reports of law cases, for reasons
hereinafter to be stated; and at night, when passing through this
bit of country, I was usually too tired to do anything more than
make an entry such as: "5 S., 4 R. A., N.E Ebony. T. 1-50, etc.,
etc."--entries that require amplification to explain their
significance, and I will proceed to explain.
Our first day's march was a very long one. Path in the ordinary
acceptance of the term there was none. Hour after hour, mile after
mile, we passed on, in the under-gloom of the great forest. The
pace made by the Fans, who are infinitely the most rapid Africans I
have ever come across, severely tired the Ajumba, who are canoe men,
and who had been as fresh as paint, after their exceedingly long
day's paddling from Arevooma to M'fetta. Ngouta, the Igalwa
interpreter, felt pumped, and said as much, very early in the day.
I regretted very much having brought him; for, from a mixture of
nervous exhaustion arising from our M'fetta experiences, and a touch
of chill he had almost entirely lost his voice, and I feared would
fall sick. The Fans were evidently quite at home in the forest, and
strode on over fallen trees and rocks with an easy, graceful stride.
What saved us weaklings was the Fans' appetites; every two hours
they sat down, and had a snack of a pound or so of meat and aguma
apiece, followed by a pipe of tobacco. We used to come up with them
at these halts. Ngouta and the Ajumba used to sit down, and rest
with them, and I also, for a few minutes, for a rest and chat, and
then I would go on alone, thus getting a good start. I got a good
start, in the other meaning of the word, on the afternoon of the
first day when descending into a ravine.
I saw in the bottom, wading and rolling in the mud, a herd of five
elephants. I remembered, hastily, that your one chance when charged
by several elephants is to dodge them round trees, working down wind
all the time, until they lose smell and sight of you, then to lie
quiet for a time, and go home. It was evident from the utter
unconcern of these monsters that I was down wind now, so I had only
to attend to dodging, and I promptly dodged round a tree, and lay
down. Seeing they still displayed no emotion on my account, and
fascinated by the novelty of the scene, I crept forward from one
tree to another, until I was close enough to have hit the nearest
one with a stone, and spats of mud, which they sent flying with
their stamping and wallowing came flap, flap among the bushes
covering me.
One big fellow had a nice pair of 40 lb. or so tusks on him,
singularly straight, and another had one big curved tusk and one
broken one. Some of them lay right down like pigs in the deeper
part of the swamp, some drew up trunkfuls of water and syringed
themselves and each other, and every one of them indulged in a good
rub against a tree. Presently when they had had enough of it they
all strolled off up wind, through the bush in Indian file, now and
then breaking off a branch, but leaving singularly little dead water
for their tonnage and breadth of beam. When they had gone I rose
up, turned round to find the men, and trod on Kiva's back then and
there, full and fair, and fell sideways down the steep hillside
until I fetched up among some roots.
It seems Kiva had come on, after his meal, before the others, and
seeing the elephants, and being a born hunter, had crawled like me
down to look at them. He had not expected to find me there, he
said. I do not believe he gave a thought of any sort to me in the
presence of these fascinating creatures, and so he got himself
trodden on. I suggested to him we should pile the baggage, and go
and have an elephant hunt. He shook his head reluctantly, saying
"Kor, kor," like a depressed rook, and explained we were not strong
enough; there were only three Fans--the Ajumba, and Ngouta did not
count--and moreover that we had not brought sufficient ammunition
owing to the baggage having to be carried, and the ammunition that
we had must be saved for other game than elephant, for we might meet
war before we met the Rembwe River.
We had by now joined the rest of the party, and were all soon
squattering about on our own account in the elephant bath. It was
shocking bad going--like a ploughed field exaggerated by a terrific
nightmare. It pretty nearly pulled all the legs off me, and to this
hour I cannot tell you if it is best to put your foot into a
footmark--a young pond, I mean--about the size of the bottom of a
Madeira work arm-chair, or whether you should poise yourself on the
rim of the same, and stride forward to its other bank boldly and
hopefully. The footmarks and the places where the elephants had
been rolling were by now filled with water, and the mud underneath
was in places hard and slippery. In spite of my determination to
preserve an awesome and unmoved calm while among these dangerous
savages, I had to give way and laugh explosively; to see the portly,
powerful Pagan suddenly convert himself into a quadruped, while Gray
Shirt poised himself on one heel and waved his other leg in the air
to advertise to the assembled nations that he was about to sit down,
was irresistible. No one made such palaver about taking a seat as
Gray Shirt; I did it repeatedly without any fuss to speak of. That
lordly elephant-hunter, the Great Wiki, would, I fancy, have strode
over safely and with dignity, but the man who was in front of him
spun round on his own axis and flung his arms round the Fan, and
they went to earth together; the heavy load on Wiki's back drove
them into the mud like a pile-driver. However we got through in
time, and after I had got up the other side of the ravine I saw the
Fan let the Ajumba go on, and were busy searching themselves for
something.
I followed the Ajumba, and before I joined them felt a fearful
pricking irritation. Investigation of the affected part showed a
tick of terrific size with its head embedded in the flesh; pursuing
this interesting subject, I found three more, and had awfully hard
work to get them off and painful too for they give one not only a
feeling of irritation at their holding-on place, but a streak of
rheumatic-feeling pain up from it. On completing operations I went
on and came upon the Ajumba in a state more approved of by
Praxiteles than by the general public nowadays. They had found out
about elephant ticks, so I went on and got an excellent start for
the next stage.
By this time, shortly after noon on the first day, we had struck
into a mountainous and rocky country, and also struck a track--a
track you had to keep your eye on or you lost it in a minute, but
still a guide as to direction.
The forest trees here were mainly ebony and great hard wood trees,
{200} with no palms save my old enemy the climbing palm, calamus, as
usual, going on its long excursions, up one tree and down another,
bursting into a plume of fronds, and in the middle of each plume one
long spike sticking straight up, which was an unopened frond,
whenever it got a gleam of sunshine; running along the ground over
anything it meets, rock or fallen timber, all alike, its long, dark-
coloured, rope-like stem simply furred with thorns. Immense must be
the length of some of these climbing palms. One tree I noticed that
day that had hanging from its summit, a good one hundred and fifty
feet above us, a long straight ropelike palm stem.
The character of the whole forest was very interesting. Sometimes
for hours we passed among thousands upon thousands of gray-white
columns of uniform height (about 100-150 feet); at the top of these
the boughs branched out and interlaced among each other, forming a
canopy or ceiling, which dimmed the light even of the equatorial sun
to such an extent that no undergrowth could thrive in the gloom.
The statement of the struggle for existence was published here in
plain figures, but it was not, as in our climate, a struggle against
climate mainly, but an internecine war from over population. Now
and again we passed among vast stems of buttressed trees, sometimes
enormous in girth; and from their far-away summits hung great bush-
ropes, some as straight as plumb lines, others coiled round, and
intertwined among each other, until one could fancy one was looking
on some mighty battle between armies of gigantic serpents, that had
been arrested at its height by some magic spell. All these bush-
ropes were as bare of foliage as a ship's wire rigging, but a good
many had thorns. I was very curious as to how they got up straight,
and investigation showed me that many of them were carried up with a
growing tree. The only true climbers were the calamus and the
rubber vine (Landolphia), both of which employ hook tackle.
Some stretches of this forest were made up of thin, spindly stemmed
trees of great height, and among these stretches I always noticed
the ruins of some forest giant, whose death by lightning or by his
superior height having given the demoniac tornado wind an extra grip
on him, had allowed sunlight to penetrate the lower regions of the
forest; and then evidently the seedlings and saplings, who had for
years been living a half-starved life for light, shot up. They
seemed to know that their one chance lay in getting with the
greatest rapidity to the level of the top of the forest. No time to
grow fat in the stem. No time to send out side branches, or any of
those vanities. Up, up to the light level, and he among them who
reached it first won in this game of life or death; for when he gets
there he spreads out his crown of upper branches, and shuts off the
life-giving sunshine from his competitors, who pale off and die, or
remain dragging on an attenuated existence waiting for another
chance, and waiting sometimes for centuries. There must be tens of
thousands of seeds which perish before they get their chance; but
the way the seeds of the hard wood African trees are packed, as it
were in cases specially made durable, is very wonderful. Indeed the
ways of Providence here are wonderful in their strange dual
intention to preserve and to destroy; but on the whole, as Peer Gynt
truly observes, "Ein guter Wirth--nein das ist er nicht."
We saw this influence of light on a large scale as soon as we
reached the open hills and mountains of the Sierra del Cristal, and
had to pass over those fearful avalanche-like timber falls on their
steep sides. The worst of these lay between Efoua and Egaja, where
we struck a part of the range that was exposed to the south-east.
These falls had evidently arisen from the tornados, which from time
to time have hurled down the gigantic trees whose hold on the
superficial soil over the sheets of hard bed rock was insufficient,
in spite of all the anchors they had out in the shape of roots and
buttresses, and all their rigging in the shape of bush ropes. Down
they had come, crushing and dragging down with them those near them
or bound to them by the great tough climbers.
Getting over these falls was perilous, not to say scratchy work.
One or another member of our party always went through; and precious
uncomfortable going it was, I found, when I tried it in one above
Egaja; ten or twelve feet of crashing creaking timber, and then
flump on to a lot of rotten, wet debris, with more snakes and
centipedes among it than you had any immediate use for, even though
you were a collector; but there you had to stay, while Wiki, who was
a most critical connoisseur, selected from the surrounding forest a
bush-rope that he regarded as the correct remedy for the case, and
then up you were hauled, through the sticks you had turned the wrong
way on your down journey.
The Duke had a bad fall, going twenty feet or so before he found the
rubbish heap; while Fika, who went through with a heavy load on his
back, took us, on one occasion, half an hour to recover; and when we
had just got him to the top, and able to cling on to the upper
sticks, Wiki, who had been superintending operations, slipped
backwards, and went through on his own account. The bush-rope we
had been hauling on was too worn with the load to use again, and we
just hauled Wiki out with the first one we could drag down and cut;
and Wiki, when he came up, said we were reckless, and knew nothing
of bush ropes, which shows how ungrateful an African can be. It
makes the perspiration run down my nose whenever I think of it. The
sun was out that day; we were neatly situated on the Equator, and
the air was semisolid, with the stinking exhalations from the swamps
with which the mountain chain is fringed and intersected; and we
were hot enough without these things, because of the violent
exertion of getting these twelve to thirteen-stone gentlemen up
among us again, and the fine varied exercise of getting over the
fall on our own account.
When we got into the cool forest beyond it was delightful;
particularly if it happened to be one of those lovely stretches of
forest, gloomy down below, but giving hints that far away above us
was a world of bloom and scent and beauty which we saw as much of as
earth-worms in a flower-bed. Here and there the ground was strewn
with great cast blossoms, thick, wax-like, glorious cups of orange
and crimson and pure white, each one of which was in itself a
handful, and which told us that some of the trees around us were
showing a glory of colour to heaven alone. Sprinkled among them
were bunches of pure stephanotis-like flowers, which said that the
gaunt bush-ropes were rubber vines that had burst into flower when
they had seen the sun. These flowers we came across in nearly every
type of forest all the way, for rubber abounds here.
I will weary you no longer now with the different kinds of forest
and only tell you I have let you off several. The natives have
separate names for seven different kinds, and these might, I think,
be easily run up to nine.
A certain sort of friendship soon arose between the Fans and me. We
each recognised that we belonged to that same section of the human
race with whom it is better to drink than to fight. We knew we
would each have killed the other, if sufficient inducement were
offered, and so we took a certain amount of care that the inducement
should not arise. Gray Shirt and Pagan also, their trade friends,
the Fans treated with an independent sort of courtesy; but Silence,
Singlet, the Passenger, and above all Ngouta, they openly did not
care a row of pins for, and I have small doubt that had it not been
for us other three they would have killed and eaten these very
amiable gentlemen with as much compunction as an English sportsman
would kill as many rabbits. They on their part hated the Fan, and
never lost an opportunity of telling me "these Fan be bad man too
much." I must not forget to mention the other member of our party,
a Fan gentleman with the manners of a duke and the habits of a
dustbin. He came with us, quite uninvited by me, and never asked
for any pay; I think he only wanted to see the fun, and drop in for
a fight if there was one going on, and to pick up the pieces
generally. He was evidently a man of some importance from the way
the others treated him; and moreover he had a splendid gun, with a
gorilla skin sheath for its lock, and ornamented all over its stock
with brass nails. His costume consisted of a small piece of dirty
rag round his loins; and whenever we were going through dense
undergrowth, or wading a swamp, he wore that filament tucked up
scandalously short. Whenever we were sitting down in the forest
having one of our nondescript meals, he always sat next to me and
appropriated the tin. Then he would fill his pipe, and turning to
me with the easy grace of aristocracy, would say what may be
translated as "My dear Princess, could you favour me with a
lucifer?"
I used to say, "My dear Duke, charmed, I'm sure," and give him one
ready lit.
I dared not trust him with the box whole, having a personal
conviction that he would have kept it. I asked him what he would do
suppose I was not there with a box of lucifers; and he produced a
bush-cow's horn with a neat wood lid tied on with tie tie, and from
out of it he produced a flint and steel and demonstrated.
The first day in the forest we came across a snake {205}--a beauty
with a new red-brown and yellow-patterned velvety skin, about three
feet six inches long and as thick as a man's thigh. Ngouta met it,
hanging from a bough, and shot backwards like a lobster, Ngouta
having among his many weaknesses a rooted horror of snakes. This
snake the Ogowe natives all hold in great aversion. For the bite of
other sorts of snakes they profess to have remedies, but for this
they have none. If, however, a native is stung by one he usually
conceals the fact that it was this particular kind, and tries to get
any chance the native doctor's medicine may give. The Duke stepped
forward and with one blow flattened its head against the tree with
his gun butt, and then folded the snake up and got as much of it as
possible into his bag, while the rest hung dangling out. Ngouta,
not being able to keep ahead of the Duke, his Grace's pace being
stiff, went to the extreme rear of the party, so that other people
might be killed first if the snake returned to life, as he surmised
it would. He fell into other dangers from this caution, but I
cannot chronicle Ngouta's afflictions in full without running this
book into an old fashioned folio size. We had the snake for supper,
that is to say the Fan and I; the others would not touch it,
although a good snake, properly cooked, is one of the best meats one
gets out here, far and away better than the African fowl.
The Fans also did their best to educate me in every way: they told
me their names for things, while I told them mine. I found several
European words already slightly altered in use among them, such as
"Amuck"--a mug, "Alas"--a glass, a tumbler. I do not know whether
their "Ami"--a person addressed, or spoken of--is French or not. It
may come from "Anwe"--M'pongwe for "Ye," "You." They use it as a
rule in addressing a person after the phrase they always open up
conversation with, "Azuna"--Listen, or I am speaking.
They also showed me many things: how to light a fire from the pith
of a certain tree, which was useful to me in after life, but they
rather overdid this branch of instruction one way and another; for
example, Wiki had, as above indicated, a mania for bush-ropes and a
marvellous eye and knowledge of them; he would pick out from among
the thousands surrounding us now one of such peculiar suppleness
that you could wind it round anything, like a strip of cloth, and as
strong withal as a hawser; or again another which has a certain
stiffness, combined with a slight elastic spring, excellent for
hauling, with the ease and accuracy of a lady who picks out the
particular twisted strand of embroidery silk from a multi-coloured
tangled ball. He would go into the bush after them while other
people were resting, and particularly after the sort which, when
split, is bright yellow, and very supple and excellent to tie round
loads.
On one occasion, between Egaja and Esoon, he came back from one of
these quests and wanted me to come and see something, very quietly;
I went, and we crept down into a rocky ravine, on the other side of
which lay one of the outermost Egaja plantations. When we got to
the edge of the cleared ground, we lay down, and wormed our way,
with elaborate caution, among a patch of Koko; Wiki first, I
following in his trail.
After about fifty yards of this, Wiki sank flat, and I saw before me
some thirty yards off, busily employed in pulling down plantains,
and other depredations, five gorillas: one old male, one young
male, and three females. One of these had clinging to her a young
fellow, with beautiful wavy black hair with just a kink in it. The
big male was crouching on his haunches, with his long arms hanging
down on either side, with the backs of his hands on the ground, the
palms upwards. The elder lady was tearing to pieces and eating a
pine-apple, while the others were at the plantains destroying more
than they ate.
They kept up a sort of a whinnying, chattering noise, quite
different from the sound I have heard gorillas give when enraged, or
from the one you can hear them giving when they are what the natives
call "dancing" at night. I noticed that their reach of arm was
immense, and that when they went from one tree to another, they
squattered across the open ground in a most inelegant style,
dragging their long arms with the knuckles downwards. I should
think the big male and female were over six feet each. The others
would be from four to five. I put out my hand and laid it on Wiki's
gun to prevent him from firing, and he, thinking I was going to
fire, gripped my wrist.
I watched the gorillas with great interest for a few seconds, until
I heard Wiki make a peculiar small sound, and looking at him saw his
face was working in an awful way as he clutched his throat with his
hand violently.
Heavens! think I, this gentleman's going to have a fit; it's lost we
are entirely this time. He rolled his head to and fro, and then
buried his face into a heap of dried rubbish at the foot of a
plantain stem, clasped his hands over it, and gave an explosive
sneeze. The gorillas let go all, raised themselves up for a second,
gave a quaint sound between a bark and a howl, and then the ladies
and the young gentleman started home. The old male rose to his full
height (it struck me at the time this was a matter of ten feet at
least, but for scientific purposes allowance must be made for a
lady's emotions) and looked straight towards us, or rather towards
where that sound came from. Wiki went off into a paroxysm of
falsetto sneezes the like of which I have never heard; nor evidently
had the gorilla, who doubtless thinking, as one of his black co-
relatives would have thought, that the phenomenon favoured Duppy,
went off after his family 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
convinced me that, given the necessity of getting about in tropical
forests, man has made a mistake in getting his arms shortened. I
have seen many wild animals in their native wilds, but never have I
seen anything to equal gorillas going through bush; it is a
graceful, powerful, superbly perfect hand-trapeze performance. {208}
After this sporting adventure, we returned, as I usually return from
a sporting adventure, without measurements or the body.
Our first day's march, though the longest, was the easiest, though,
providentially I did not know this at the time. From my Woermann
road walks I judge it was well twenty-five miles. It was easiest
however, from its lying for the greater part of the way through the
gloomy type of forest. All day long we never saw the sky once.
The earlier part of the day we were steadily going up hill, here and
there making a small descent, and then up again, until we came on to
what was apparently a long ridge, for on either side of us we could
look down into deep, dark, ravine-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 rivers
all went to Lake Ayzingo.
We had to hurry because Kiva, who was the only one among us who had
been to Efoua, said 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, when we did get there,
simmering 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
they 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 condition of my own cat's pet
table leg at home, demonstrating leopards in the vicinity. I kept
going, as it was my only chance, because I found I stiffened if I
sat down, and they always carefully told me the direction to go in
when they sat down; with their superior 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 which I had
been told I should meet with, and, when met with, I must follow.
The path was slightly indistinct, but by keeping my eye on it I
could see it. Presently 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, some fifteen feet or so below ground
level, at the bottom of a bag-shaped game pit.
It is at these times you realise the blessing of a good thick skirt.
Had I paid heed to the advice of many people in England, who ought
to have known better, and did not do it themselves, and adopted
masculine garments, I should have been spiked to the bone, and done
for. Whereas, save for a good many bruises, here I was with the
fulness of my skirt tucked under me, sitting on nine ebony spikes
some twelve inches long, in comparative comfort, howling lustily to
be hauled out. The Duke came along first, and looked down at me. I
said, "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 I; "get a bush-rope and haul me out." "No
fit," says he, and sat down on the log. Presently, however, Kiva
and Wiki came up, and Wiki went and selected the one and only bush-
rope suitable 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 about in 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. Each man then pulled the skin cover off
his gun lock, carefully 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 Silence out, binding him up where necessary
with cool green leaves; for he, not having a skirt, 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. We sounded our ground, as we went into a
thick plantain patch, through which we could see a great clearing in
the forest, and the low huts of a big town. We charged into it,
going right through the guard-house gateway, at one end, in single
file, as its narrowness obliged us, and into the street-shaped town,
and formed ourselves into as imposing a looking party as possible 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 us 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 sufficient left to make a crowd in
a ring round us. Fortunately Wiki and Kiva's friends were present,
and 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 everything 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. When 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, Why 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 twenty-five balls of rubber, which I bought to promote
good feeling, subsequently dashing them to Wiki, 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 fish-
hooks would not be of much value because Efoua was not near a big
water of any sort; so I held fish-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 finished trade for that night. However the old
gentleman was not to be put off, and after an unsuccessful attempt
to sell me his 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 dispose of which Gray Shirt said was "good too much."
Off he went across the street, and disappeared into his hut, where
he evidently had a thorough hunt for the precious article. One box
after another was brought out to the light of a bush torch held by
one of his wives, and there was a great confabulation between him
and his family of the "I'm sure you had it last," "You must have
moved it," "Never touched the thing," sort. At 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 carefully with tie
tie. This being removed, disclosed a layer of rag, which was
unwound from round a central article. Whatever can this be? thinks
I; some rare and valuable object doubtless, let's hope connected
with Fetish worship, and I anxiously watched its unpacking; in the
end, however, it disclosed, to my disgust and rage, an old shilling
razor. The way the old chief held it out, and the amount of dollars
he asked for it, was enough to make any one believe that I was in
such urgent need of the thing, that I was at his mercy regarding
price. I waved it off with a haughty scorn, and then feeling
smitten by the expression of agonised bewilderment on his face, I
dashed him a belt that delighted him, and went inside and had tea to
soothe my outraged feelings.
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 of which the hut was made. The next door neighbours on
either side might have amassed a comfortable 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." As soon as all my men had come in,
and established themselves 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 legal 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. Waking 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 fellow
friendly tribesfolk, yet they like to keep a little something
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-house. 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 the 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
their chop, and binding up anew the loads with Wiki's fresh supple
bush-ropes. Kiva amused me much; during our march his costume was
exceeding scant, but when we reached the towns he took from his bag
garments, and attired himself 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 repacking. 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 Rembwe.
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 swamp and each swamp its river.
This bit of country must be absolutely impassable for any human
being, black or white, except during the dry season. There were
representatives 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
experience in Devonian bogs, I knew pace was 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
other 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 with 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 worst 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
right 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 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. It is still less pleasant, however,
going up the other side of the ravine when you have got through your
swamp. You have to fight your way upwards among rough rocks,
through this 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, batterlike ooze came up round his neck, and then turning back
and trying in another place; while the rest of the party sat upon
the bank until the ford was found, feeling it was unnecessary to
throw away 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 easier, but I was like the immortal
Schmelzle, during that omnibus journey he made on his way to Flaetz
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 towns, depending for the defence of their settlement
on a body of black soldiers. This is not so in Congo Francais, and
I had behind me the prestige of a set of white men to whom for the
native to say, "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. Whittaker, and
that vivacious French official, were not men any man, black or
white, would willingly ruffle; and in addition there was the memory
among the black traders of "that white man MacTaggart," whom an
enterprising trading tribe near Fernan Vaz had had the hardihood to
tackle, shooting him, and then towing him behind a canoe and
slashing him all over 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.
But to return to that gorilla-land forest. All the rivers we
crossed on the first, second, and third day I was told went into one
or other of the branches of the Ogowe, showing that the long slope
of land between the Ogowe and the Rembwe 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; only hereabouts there was not amongst it those great masses
of white quartz, which are so prominent a feature from Talagouga
upwards in the Ogowe valley; neither were 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
disintegrating forces of the torrential rain and sun, and the dense
forest growing on them. Frost of course they had not been subject
to, but rocks, I noticed, were often being somewhat similarly split
by rootlets having got into some tiny crevice, and by gradual growth
enlarged it to a crack.
Of our troubles among the timber falls on these mountains I have
already spoken; and these were 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 all very nearly tired out with the
athletic sports since leaving Efoua. One thing only we knew about
Egaja for sure, and that was that not one of us had a friend there,
and that it was a town of extra evil repute, so we were not feeling
very cheerful when towards evening time we struck its outermost
plantations, their immediate vicinity being announced to us by
Silence treading full and fair on to a sharp ebony spike 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; I 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
plantation, because it fades out in the cleared ground, or starts
playing games with a lot of other little paths that are running
about amongst the crops, and no West African path goes straight into
a stream or a plantation, and straight out the other side, so you
have a nice time picking it up again.
We were spared a good deal of fine varied walking by our new friend
the rubber collector; for I noticed he led us out by a path nearly
at right angles to the one by which we had entered. He then pitched
into a pit which was half full of thorns, and which he observed he
did not know was there, demonstrating that an African guide can
speak the truth. When he had got out, he handed back Silence's load
and got 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 downhill again. "Oh, bless those swamps!" thought I, "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 above a river, 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 swamp I have
ever seen, yea, even for a certain bush-rope bridge in which I once
wound myself up like a buzzing fly in a spider's web. I was
fearfully tired, and my legs shivered 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 river, and half swam, half waded across. All
the Ajumba, save Pagan, followed, and Ngouta got across with their
assistance. Pagan thought he would try the bridge, and I thought I
would watch how the thing worked. He got about three yards along it
and then slipped, but caught the tree with his hands as he fell, and
hauled himself 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 better, but it
was bare, bald, and round, and a slip meant death on the rocks
below. I rushed it, and reached the other side in safety, whereby
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, did not seem much worth reaching,
being a swampy fringe at the bottom of a steep hillside, and after a
few yards the path turned into a stream or backwater of the river.
It was hedged with thickly pleached bushes, and covered with liquid
water on the top of semi-liquid mud. Now and again for a change you
had a foot of water on top of fearfully slippery harder mud, and
then we light-heartedly took headers into the bush, sideways, or sat
down; and when it was not proceeding on the evil 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 fishing-net, and it was very quaint to see the man in front, who
had been paddling along knee-deep before, now plop down with the
water round his shoulders; and getting out of these slippery
pockets, which were sometimes a tight fit, was difficult.
However 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 overgrown swamp
fringing the river 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
town with an evil name even among the Fan, but where we had got to
stay, fair or foul. We went into it through its palaver house, and
soon had the usual row.
I had detected signs of trouble among my men during the whole 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 locality, and go hunting with them and
divers other choice spirits, whom they assured me we could easily
get to join us at Efoua. I kept peace as well as I could,
explaining to the Fans I had not enough money with me now, because I
had not, when starting, expected such magnificent opportunities to
be placed at my disposal; and promising to come back next year--a
promise I hope to keep--and then we would go and have a grand 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 our being united.
When the first burst of Egaja conversation began to boil down into
something 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. He placed a house at my disposal,
quite a mansion, for it had no less than four apartments. The first
one was almost entirely 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. While 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. It 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 felt sombrero hat, an ample cloth of
Boma check; but his face and general bearing was distinctive, and
very powerful and intelligent; 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, ordering his people to
bring me a stool and one for himself, and then a fly-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, etc. After
compliments, "Tell the chief," I said, "that I hear this town of his
is thief town."
"Better not, sir," says Pagan.
"Go on," said I, "or I'll tell him myself."
So Pagan did. It was a sad 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. We 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 district had not
been in contact with white culture; and altogether I and the chief
became great friends.
Just when I was going in to have my much-desired tea, he brought me
his mother--an old lady, evidently very bright and able, but, poor
woman, with the most disgusting hand and arm 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 afterwards, 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 Condy's
fluid, 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
arm-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 going to
sleep. I then washed the abscess well out, and having got a lot of
baked plantains, I made a big poultice of them, mixed with boiling
water and more Condy 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 was that some forty-eight hours
ago she had been wading along the bank, catching crawfish, and had
been stung by "a fish 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 with
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, pil. crotonis cum hydrargi, 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, with firm
injunctions only to take one at the first time. I knew that that
one would teach him not to take more than one forever 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 of the yaws about; lots of cases of
dum with the various 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 enthusiast would call a "lovely case" of
filaria, 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 skin, looking like the
bridge of a pair of spectacles. It was past eleven before I had
anything like done, and my men had long been sound asleep, but the
chief had conscientiously sat up and seen the thing 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 goodnight;
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 yells 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
instantly. At four sharp, whole town of Egaja plunged into emotion,
and worse shindy. I suggested to the Ajumba they should go out; but
no, they didn't care a row of pins if one of our Fans did get
killed, so I went, recognising Kiva's voice in high expostulation.
Kiva, 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 Kiva owed the said man a coat. {223}
Kiva, it seems, has been spending the whole evening demonstrating to
his creditor that, had he only known they were to meet, he would
have brought the coat with him--a particularly beautiful coat--and
the reason 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 Kiva has never been at
home; and moreover that Kiva's wife (one of them) stole a yellow dog
of great value from his (the creditor's) canoe. Kiva says, women
will be women, and he had gone off to sleep thinking the affair had
blown over and the bill renewed for the time being. The creditor
had not gone to sleep; but sat up thinking 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 forthwith on the debtor's
estate, 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 of our
own institutions existing in the culture of a lower race.
Nevertheless it is trying to be hauled out of one's sleep in the
middle of the night, and plunged into this study. Evidently this
was a trace of an early form of the Bankruptcy Court; the court
which clears a man of his debt, being here represented by the knife
and the cooking pot; the whitewashing, as I believe it is termed
with us, also shows, only it is not the debtor who is whitewashed,
but the creditors doing themselves over with white clay to celebrate
the removal of their enemy from his sphere of meretricious activity.
This inversion may arise from the fact that whitewashing a creditor
who was about to be cooked would be unwise, as the stuff would boil
off the bits and spoil the gravy. There is always some fragment of
sound sense underlying African institutions. Kiva was, when I got
out, tied up, talking nineteen to the dozen; and so was every one
else; and a lady was working up white 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 revolver, and then flown with
my band to the bush; only my band evidently had no flying in them,
being tucked up in the hut pretending to be asleep, and uninterested
in the affair; and although I could have abandoned the band without
a pang just then, I could not so lightheartedly fly alone with Kiva
to the bush and leave my fishes; so I shouted Azuna to the
Bankruptcy Court, and got a Fan who spoke trade English to come and
interpret for me; and from him I learnt the above stated outline 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
regarding certain passages in the history of the early Jews--that it
was a long time ago, and aiblins 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
Mr. 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 weird 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
jurisdiction, 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 saying his say, and
after his "Azuna" had produced a patch of silence he could move his
tongue in, and he similarly regarding me during my speech for the
defence. We neither, I expect, understood each other, and we had
trouble with our client, who would keep pleading "Not guilty," which
was absurd. Anyhow we produced our effect, my success arising from
my concluding my speech with the announcement that I would give the
creditor a book on Hatton and Cookson for the coat, and I would
deduct it from Kiva's pay.
But, said the Court: "We 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 Ju 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 could 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
Holty 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
recently gone through with one. Not that I doubt for one minute but
that his representatives would have honoured my book; for the
generosity and helpfulness of West 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 never 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 wall. 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 his criminal
career I had had last night, and I knew it was very doubtful whether
my other three Fans were any better than he. There was his grace's
little murder affair only 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 sure my Pappenheimers would take a lot of beating for good
solid crime, among any tribe anywhere. Moreover, 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
was human. It may have been; it was in neat pieces; and again, as
the Captain of the late s.s. Sparrow would say, "it mayn't." But
the Ajumba have a horror of cannibalism, and I honestly believe
never practise it, even for fetish affairs, which is a rare thing in
a West African tribe where sacrificial and ceremonial cannibalism is
nearly universal. Anyhow the Ajumba loudly declared the Fans were
"bad men too much," which was impolitic under existing
circumstances, and inexcusable, because it by no means arose from a
courageous defiance of them; but the West African! Well! "'E's a
devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan child in one."
The chief was very anxious for me to stay and rest, but as his
mother was doing wonderfully well, and the other women seemed quite
to understand my directions regarding her, I did not feel inclined
to risk it. The old lady's farewell of me was peculiar: she took
my hand in her two, turned it palm upwards, and spat on it. I do
not know whether this is a constant form of greeting among the Fan;
I fancy not. Dr. Nassau, who explained it to me when I saw him
again down at Baraka, said the spitting was merely an accidental by-
product of the performance, which consisted in blowing a blessing;
and as I happened on this custom twice afterwards, I feel sure from
observation he is right.
The two chiefs saw us courteously 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 fortification
of the plantation. I gave them an equal dash, and in answer to
their question as to whether I had found Egaja a thief-town, I said
that to call Egaja a thief-town was rank perjury, 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.
The defences of the fine series of plantations of Egaja on this side
were most intricate, to judge from the zigzag course our guide led
us through them. He explained they had to be because of the
character of the towns towards the Rembwe. After listening to this
young man, I really began to doubt that the Cities of the Plain had
really been destroyed, and wondered whether some future revision
committee will not put transported for destroyed. This young man
certainly hit off the character of Sodom and Gomorrah to the life,
in describing the towns towards the Rembwe, though he had never
heard Sodom and Gomorrah named. He assured me I should see the
difference between them and Egaja the Good, and I thanked him and
gave him his 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 ravine, which was
exceeding steep, ran a little river free from swamp. As I was
wading it I noticed it had a peculiarity that distinguished it from
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
Allah! 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 went 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, giving out as it does so a strong ammoniacal
smell. When the fire was alight there would be a group of rubber
collectors sitting round it watching the cooking operations,
removing those pieces that had run dry 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 piece of bush rope tied into a knot, which indicated whose
property the pile was.
The method of collection employed by the Fan is exceedingly
wasteful, because this fool of a vegetable Landolphia florida
(Ovariensis) 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 natives there to collect by incisions only, has failed;
for in the early days a man could get a load of rubber almost at his
own door on the Gold Coast, and now he has to go fifteen days'
journey inland for it. When 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 districts 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 rubber
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
village 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 discourages 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.
Wiki, being great on bush rope, gave me much information regarding
rubber, showing me the various other vines besides 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 when 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 then 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-looking 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, Arum esculentum (Koko is
better than yam, I may remark, because it is heavier), also smoked
approximately 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. So great is the
adulteration, that most of the traders have to cut each ball open.
Even the Kinsembo rubber, which 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
additions 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 the muddy pools
to soak up as much water as possible before going into the hands of
the traders, they get almost inky in colour.
CHAPTER IX. FROM ESOON TO AGONJO.
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 itself 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 acquaintances, feeling sure that for good solid
murderous rascality several of my old Fan acquaintances, and even my
own party, would take a lot of beating; and yet, one and all, they
had behaved well to me. Esoon gave me to understand that of all the
Sodoms 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 survive 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 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 impossible to reach Uguma's factory." "Why?"
"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 sight 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. No one had been killed since the first party of
Esoonians were fired on at long range, because no one had gone that
way; 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, who 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--first--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 this 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 W.N.W., which struck the Rembwe by N'dorko, 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, but at the time in Esoon it
looked nice enough.
Some few of the more highly cultured inhabitants here could speak
trade English a little, and had been to the Rembwe, and were quite
intelligent about the whole affair. They had seen white men. A
village they formerly occupied nearer the Rembwe had been burnt by
them, on account of a something that had occurred to a Catholic
priest who visited it. They were, of course, none of them
personally mixed up in this sad affair, so could give no details of
what had befallen the priest. They knew also "the Move," which was
a great bond of union between us. "Was I a wife of them Move white
man," they inquired--"or them other white man?" I civilly said them
Move men were my tribe, and they ought to have known it by the look
of me. They discussed my points of resemblance to "the Move white
man," and I am ashamed to say I could not forbear from smiling, as I
distinctly recognised my friends from the very racy description of
their personal appearance and tricks of manner given by a lively
Esoonian belle who had 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 habit of doing, and had
them dried. I wanted to have them rubbed with palm oil, but I
found, to my surprise, that there was no palm oil 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, while among the ladies of Esoon--a forward set
of minxes--with the vigilance of a dragon; and decreed, like the
Mikado of Japan, "that whosoever 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 them going
into jail; no mean performance when you remember that every man had
a past--to put it mildly.
Esoon is not situated like the other towns, with a swamp and the
forest close round it; but it is built on the side of a fairly
cleared ravine among its plantain groves. When 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 river, and up into the town--one long, broad,
clean-kept street. 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 dealing 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. All our paths took us
during the early part of the day up and down hills, through swamps
and little rivers, all flowing Rembwe-wards. About 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 magnitude,
into which four of us had fallen, I of course for one, I saw a sight
that made my heart stand still. 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 mangrove; doubtless the fringe of the River Rembwe, which
evidently 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
several rivers falling into it at its head, and this fjord brings
the sea water further inland. In addition to this the two rivers,
the 'Como (Nkama) and Rembwe that fall into this Gaboon, with
several smaller 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, "It's perfectly simple
if you think 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 W. 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 forgetful 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. We found ourselves at the edge of that open
line we had seen from the mountain. Not standing, because you don't
so much as try to stand on mangrove 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 some miles long. We could not see either the west 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 mangroves 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 direction we had better take. Then I
observed that the roots, aerial and otherwise, were coated in mud,
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 of quiver
running through it, and here and there it exhibited swellings on its
surface, which rose in one place and fell in another. No need for
an old coaster like me to 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 out, one time, and the nearest
way. It's to be hoped the practice we have acquired in mangrove
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.
Fortunately 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 mangrove swamp network of slimy roots rising
out of the water, and swinging lines of aerial ones coming down to
the water a la 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 putrefying
ooze all round us. For an hour and a half thought I, Why 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.
We 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 great bubble coming out of the swamp, and bore steadily 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 strange water plants, the names whereof I know not. There
was just one part where that abomination, pandanus, 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 over its charms. But the great point was that the
mountains we got to on the other side of it, were a good solid
ridge, running, it is true, E. and W., while we wanted to go N.;
still on we went waiting for developments, and watching the great
line of mangrove-swamp spreading along below us to the left hand,
seeing many of 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
through 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 mangrove-swamp the sun could
reach the soil, owing to the steepness and abruptness and the
changes of curves of the ground; while the soft steamy air which
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 rafia palms, looking as if they
had been grown under glass, so deliciously green and profuse was
their feather-like foliage, intermingled with giant red woods, and
lovely dark glossy green lianes, blooming in wreaths and festoons of
white and mauve flowers, which 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 we passed on, the ridge turned N. and the mangrove line narrowed
between the hills. Our path now ran east and more in the middle of
the forest, and the cool shade was charming after the heat we had
had earlier in the day. We crossed a lovely little stream coming
down the hillside in a cascade; and then our path plunged into a
beautiful valley. We had glimpses 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 forget 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 all a background
of soft, pale, purple-blue mountains and 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
without destroying the beauty of detail. Those African misty
forests have the same marvellous distinctive quality that Turner
gives one in his 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
exquisite beauty of that valley, little thinking or knowing what
there was in it besides beauty, as Allah "in mercy hid the book of
fate." On we went among the ferns and flowers until we met a swamp,
a different 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 with
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 armpits. 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
busily 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 fate
that demands of me a personal acquaintance with fluvial and paludial
ground deposits; whereupon I took a header, and am thereby able to
inform the world, that there is between fifteen and twenty feet of
water each side of that log. I conscientiously went in on one side,
and came up on the other. The log, I conjecture, is odum or ebony,
and it is some fifty feet long; anyhow it is some sort of wood that
won't float. Gray Shirt says it is a bridge across an under-swamp
river. Having survived this and reached the opposite bank, we
shortly fell in with a party of men and women, who were taking, they
said, a parcel of rubber to Holty's. They told us 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. We knew it, we said, in
the foolishness of our hearts thinking they meant the one we had
just forded, and leaving them resting, passed on our 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 south 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 reflection was as vivid as the reality, and above all
remarkable was a plant, {241} new and strange to me, whose pale-
green stem came up out of the water and then spread out in a
flattened surface, thin, and in a peculiarly graceful curve. This
flattened surface had growing out from it leaves, the size, shape
and colour of lily of the valley leaves; until I saw this thing I
had held the wine palm to be the queen of grace in the vegetable
kingdom, but this new beauty quite surpassed her.
Our path went straight into this swamp over the black rocks forming
its rim, in an imperative, no alternative, "Come-along-this-way"
style. Singlet, who was leading, carrying a good load of bottled
fish and a gorilla specimen, went at it like a man, and disappeared
before the eyes of us close following him, then and there down
through the water. He came up, thanks be, but his load is down
there now, worse luck. Then I said 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-looking row, until they
arrived. When they came up they did not plunge in forthwith; but
leisurely set about making a most nerve-shaking set of preparations,
taking off their clothes, and forming them into bundles, which, to
my horror, 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 holding his gun high
above his head. They skirted the bank before they struck out into
the swamp, and were followed by the women and by our party, and soon
we were all up to our chins.
We were two hours and a quarter passing that swamp. I 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 fortunate. 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.
We 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 in a few minutes were standing in the middle of a
ramshackle village, at the end of which, through a high stockade,
with its gateway smeared with blood which hung in gouts, we saw our
much longed for Rembwe River. I made for it, taking small notice of
the hubbub our arrival occasioned, and passed through the gateway,
setting its guarding bell ringing violently; I stood on the steep,
black, mud slime bank, surrounded by a noisy crowd. It is a big
river, but nothing to the Ogowe, either in breadth or beauty; what
beauty it has is of the Niger delta type--black mud-laden water,
with a mangrove swamp fringe to it in all directions. I soon turned
back into the village and asked for Ugumu's factory. "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 he pointed to one of the huts on the right-hand side,
indistinguishable in squalor from the rest. "Where's the Agent?"
said I. "I'm the Agent," he answered. You could have knocked me
down with a feather. "Where's John Holt's factory?" said I. "You
have passed it; it is up on the hill." This showed Messrs. Holt's
local factory to be no bigger than Ugumu's. At 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 'way,"
says Agent number one. Fearing my two Agents would fight and damage
each other, so that neither would be any good for me, I firmly said,
"Have you got any rum?" Agent number one looked crestfallen,
Holty's triumphant. "Rum, fur sure," says he; so I gave him a five-
franc piece, which he regarded with great pleasure, and putting 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
brightened, "Plenty tobacco, plenty cloth," said he; so I told him
to give me out twenty heads. I gave my men two heads apiece. I
told them rum was coming, and ordered them to take the loads on to
Hatton and Cookson's Agent's hut and then to go and buy chop and
make themselves comfortable. They highly 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; while 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 somebody), and that
therefore I must take up my quarters at their Store; but Holty's
energetic agent hung about me like a vulture in hopes of getting
more five franc-piece pickings. I sent Ngouta off to get me some
tea, and had the hut cleared of an excited audience, and shut myself
in with Hatton and Cookson'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-evident he had not got anything like enough
stuff to pay off my men with, and my agreement was to pay off on the
Rembwe, hence my horror at the smallness of the firm's N'dorko
store. "Besides," I said, "Mr. Glass (I knew the head Rembwe agent
of Hatton and Cookson was a Mr. Glass), you have only got cloth and
tobacco, and I have promised the Fans to pay off in whatever they
choose, and I know for sure they want powder." "I am not Mr.
Glass," said 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 Rembwe and the
place we ought to have come out at. There was a botheration again
about sending up a message, because of a war palaver; but I got a
pencil note, with my letter of introduction from Mr. Cockshut to
Sanga Glass, at last delivered to that gentleman; and down he came,
in a state of considerable astonishment, not unmixed with alarm, for
no white man of any kind had been across from the Ogowe for years,
and none had ever come out at N'dorko. Mr. Glass I found an
exceedingly neat, well-educated M'pongwe gentleman in irreproachable
English garments, and with irreproachable, but slightly floreate,
English language. We started talking trade, with my band in the
middle of the street; making a patch of uproar in the moonlit
surrounding silence. As soon as we thought we had got one
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 number one's mind came all to pieces again, and
he wanted "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 your lady
customers, just you come out here and try to serve, and satisfy a
set of Fans! Mr. Glass was evidently an expert at the affair, but
it was past 11 p.m. before we got the orders written out, and
getting my baggage into some canoes, that Mr. Glass 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 Fan,
who had been promised a safe conduct. He came to see the bundles
for his fellow Fans were made up satisfactorily. The canoes being
small there was quite a procession of them. Mr. Glass and I shared
one, which was paddled by two small 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 mangrove flies would have joined the
party, we must have foundered; but all went well; and on arriving at
Agonjo Mr. Glass most kindly opened his store, and by the light of
lamps and lanterns, we picked out the goods from his varied and
ample supply, and handed them over to the Ajumba and Kiva, and all,
save three of the Ajumba, were satisfied. The three, Gray Shirt,
Silence, and Pagan quietly explained to me that they found the
Rembwe price so little better than the Lembarene price that they
would rather get their pay off Mr. Cockshut, than risk taking it
back through the Fan country, so I 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 they were more than satisfied. I must say they never
clamoured for dash for top. The Passenger we had brought through
with us, who had really made himself very helpful, was quite
surprised at getting a bundle of goods from me. My only anxiety was
as to whether Fika would get his share all right; but I expect he
did, for the Ajumbas are very honest men; and they were 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 palaver.
I had a touching farewell with the Fans: and so in peace, good
feeling, and prosperity I parted company for the second time with
"the terrible M'pongwe," whom I hope to meet with again, for with
all their many faults and failings, they are real men. I am faint-
hearted enough to hope, that our 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. Watts's Titans, and to have fallen
into shocking bad repair.
CHAPTER X. BUSH TRADE AND FAN CUSTOMS.
Wherein the Voyager, having fallen among the black traders,
discourses on these men and their manner of life; and the
difficulties and dangers attending the barter they carry on with the
bush savages; and on some of the reasons that makes this barter so
beloved and followed by both the black trader and the savage. To
which is added an account of the manner 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 such like things.
I 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 woman, 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.
One of these black trader factories is an exceedingly interesting
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 that the native is not cheated; no, not even by a fellow
African trader; and I will merely here pause to sing a paean to a
very unpopular class--the black middleman as he exists on the South-
West Coast. It is impossible to realise the gloom of the lives of
these men in bush factories, unless you have lived in one. It is no
use saying "they know nothing better and so don't feel it," for they
do know several things better, being very sociable men, fully
appreciative of the joys of a Coast town, and their aim, object and
end in life is, in almost every case, to get together a fortune that
will enable them to live in one, give a dance twice a week, card
parties most nights, and dress themselves up so that their fellow
Coast townsmen may hate them and their townswomen love them. From
their own accounts of the dreadful state of trade; and the awful and
unparalleled series of losses they have had, from the upsetting of
canoes, the raids and robberies made on them and their goods by
"those awful bush savages"; you would, if you were of a trustful
disposition, regard the black trader with an admiring awe as the man
who has at last solved the great commercial problem of how to keep a
shop and live by the loss. Nay, not only live, but build for
himself an equivalent to a palatial residence, and keep up, not only
it, but half a dozen wives, with a fine taste for dress every one of
them. I am not of a trustful disposition and I accept those
"losses" with a heavy discount, and know most of the rest of them
have come out of my friend the white trader's pockets. Still I can
never feel the righteous indignation that I ought to feel, when I
see the black trader "down in a seaport town with his Nancy," etc.,
as Sir W. H. S. Gilbert classically says, because I remember those
bush factories.
Mr. Glass, however, was not a trader who made a fortune by losing
those of other people; for he had been many years in the employ of
the firm. He had risen certainly to the high post and position of
charge of the Rembwe, but he was not down giddy-flying at Gaboon.
His accounts of his experiences when he had been many years ago away
up the still little known Nguni River, in a factory in touch with
the lively Bakele, then in a factory among Fans and Igalwa on the
Ogowe, and now among Fans and Skekiani on the Rembwe, were
fascinating, and told vividly of the joys of first starting a
factory in a wild district. The way in which your customers, for
the first month or so, enjoyed themselves by trying to frighten you,
the trader, out of your wits and goods, and into giving them fancy
prices for things you were trading in, and for things of no earthly
use to you, or any one else! The trader's existence during this
period is marked by every unpleasantness save dulness; from that he
is spared by the presence of a mob of noisy, dangerous, thieving
savages all over his place all day; invading his cook-house, to put
some nastiness into his food as a trade charm; helping themselves to
portable property at large; and making themselves at home to the
extent of sitting on his dining-table. At night those customers
proceed to sleep all over the premises, with a view to being on hand
to start shopping in the morning. Woe betide the trader if he gives
in to this, and tolerates the invasion, for there is no chance of
that house ever being his own again; and in addition to the local
flies, etc., on the table-cloth, he will always have several big
black gentlemen to share his meals. If he raises prices, to tide
over some extra row, he is a lost man; for the Africans can
understand prices going up, but never prices coming down; and time
being no object, they will hold back their trade. Then the district
is ruined, and the trader along with it, for he cannot raise the
price he gets for the things he buys.
What that trader has got to do, is to be a "Devil man." They always
kindly said they recognised me as one, which is a great compliment.
He must betray no weakness, but a character which I should describe
as a compound of the best parts of those of Cardinal Richelieu,
Brutus, Julius Caesar, Prince Metternich, and Mezzofanti, the latter
to carry on the native language part of the business; and he must
cast those customers out, not only from his house; but from his
yard; and adhere to the "No admittance except on business"
principle. This causes a good deal of unpleasantness, and the
trader's nights are now cheered by lively war-dances outside his
stockade; the accompanying songs advertising that the customers are
coming over the stockade to raid the store, and cut up the trader
"into bits like a fish." Sometimes they do come--and then--finish;
but usually they don't; and gradually settle down, and respect the
trader greatly as "a Devil man"; and do business on sound lines
during the day. Over the stockade at night, by ones and twos,
stealing, they will come to the end of the chapter.
Moonlight nights are fairly restful for the bush trader, but when it
is inky black, or pouring with rain, he has got to be very much out
and about, and particularly vigilant has he got to be on tornado
nights--a most uncomfortable sort of weather to attend to business
in, I assure you.
The factory at Agonjo was typical; the house is a fine specimen of
the Igalwa style of architecture; mounted on poles above the ground;
the space under the house being used as a store for rubber in
barrels, and ebony in billets; thereby enabling the trader to hover
over these precious possessions, sleeping and waking, like a sitting
hen over her eggs. Near to the house are the sleeping places for
the beach hands, and the cook-house. In front, in a position
commanded by the eye from the verandah, and well withdrawn from the
stockade, are great piles of billets of red bar wood. The whole of
the clean, sandy yard containing these things, and divers others, is
surrounded by a stout stockade, its main face to the river frontage,
the water at high tide lapping its base, and at low tide exposing in
front of it a shore of black slime. Although I cite this factory as
a typical factory of a black trader, it is a specimen of the highest
class, for, being in connection with Messrs. Hatton and Cookson it
is well kept up and stocked. Firms differ much in this particular.
Messrs. Hatton and Cookson, like Messrs. Miller Brothers in the
Bights, take every care that lies in their power of the people who
serve them, down to the Kruboys working on their beaches, giving
ample and good rations and providing good houses. But this is not
so with all firms on the Coast. I have seen factories belonging to
the Swedish houses beside which this factory at Agonjo is a palace
although those factories are white man factories, and the
unfortunate white men in them are expected by these firms to live on
native chop--an expectation the Agents by no means realise, for they
usually die. Black hands, however, do not suffer much at the hands
of such firms, for the Swedish Agents are a quiet, gentlemanly set
of men, in the best sense of that much misused term, and they do not
employ on their beaches such a staff of black helpers as the English
houses, so the two or three Kruboys on a starvation beach can fairly
well fend for themselves, for there is always an adjacent village,
and in that village there are always chickens, and on the shore
crabs, and in the river fish, and for the rest of his diet the
Kruboy flirts with the local ladies.
Although, as I have laid down, the bush factory at its best is a
place, as Mr. Tracey Tupman would say, more fitted for a wounded
heart than for one still able to feast on social joys, it is a
luxurious situation for a black trader compared to the other form of
trading he deals with--that of travelling among the native villages
in the bush. This has one hundred times the danger, and a thousand
times the discomfort, and is a thoroughly unhealthy pursuit. The
journeys these bush traders make are often remarkable, and they
deserve great credit for the courage and enterprise they display.
Certainly they run less risk of death from fever than a white man
would; but, on the other hand, their colour gives them no
protection; and their chance of getting murdered is distinctly
greater, the white governmental powers cannot revenge their death,
in the way they would the death of a white man, for these murders
usually take place away in some forest region, in a district no
white man has ever penetrated.
You will naturally ask how it is that so many of these men do
survive "to lead a life of sin" as a missionary described to me
their Coast town life to be. This question struck me as requiring
explanation. The result of my investigations, and the answers I
have received from the men themselves, show that there is a reason
why the natives do not succumb every time to the temptation to kill
the trader, and take his goods, and this is twofold: firstly, all
trade in West Africa follows definite routes, even in the wildest
parts of it; and so a village far away in the forest, but on the
trade route, knows that as a general rule twice a year, a trader
will appear to purchase its rubber and ivory. If he does not appear
somewhere about the expected time, that village gets uneasy. The
ladies are impatient for their new clothes; the gentlemen half wild
for want of tobacco; and things coming to a crisis, they make
inquiries for the trader down the road, one village to another, and
then, if it is found that a village has killed the trader, and
stolen all his goods, there is naturally a big palaver, and things
are made extremely hot, even for equatorial Africa, for that village
by the tobaccoless husbands of the clothesless wives. Herein lies
the trader's chief safety, the village not being an atom afraid, or
disinclined to kill him, but afraid of their neighbouring villages,
and disinclined to be killed by them. But the trader is not yet
safe. There is still a hole in his armour, and this is only to be
stopped up in one way, namely, by wives; for you see although the
village cannot safely kill him, and take all his goods, they can
still let him die safely of a disease, and take part of them,
passing on sufficient stuff to the other villages to keep them
quiet. Now the most prevalent disease in the African bush comes out
of the cooking pot, and so to make what goes into the cooking pot--
which is the important point, for earthen pots do not in themselves
breed poison--safe and wholesome, you have got to have some one who
is devoted to your health to attend to the cooking affairs, and who
can do this like a wife? So you have a wife--one in each village up
the whole of your route. I know myself one gentleman whose wives
stretch over 300 miles of country, with a good wife base in a Coast
town as well. This system of judiciously conducted alliances, gives
the black trader a security nothing else can, because naturally he
marries into influential families at each village, and all his
wife's relations on the mother's side regard him as one of
themselves, and look after him and his interests. That security can
lie in women, especially so many women, the so-called civilised man
may ironically doubt, but the security is there, and there only, and
on a sound basis, for remember the position of a travelling trader's
wife in a village is a position that gives the lady prestige, the
discreet husband showing little favours to her family and friends,
if she asks for them when he is with her; and then she has not got
the bother of having a man always about the house, and liable to get
all sorts of silly notions into his head if she speaks to another
gentleman, and then go and impart these notions to her with a
cutlass, or a kassengo, as the more domestic husband, I am assured
by black ladies, is prone to.
You may now, I fear, be falling into the other adjacent error--from
the wonder why any black trader survives, namely, into the wonder
why any black trader gets killed; with all these safeguards, and
wives. But there is yet another danger, which no quantity of wives,
nor local jealousies avail to guard him through. This danger arises
from the nomadic habits of the bush tribes, notably the Fan. For
when a village has made up its mind to change its district, either
from having made the district too hot to hold it, with quarrels with
neighbouring villages; or because it has exhausted the trade stuff,
i.e. rubber and ivory in reach of its present situation; or because
some other village has raided it, and taken away all the stuff it
was saving to sell to the black trader; it resolves to give itself a
final treat in the old home, and make a commercial coup at one fell
swoop. Then when the black trader turns up with his boxes of goods,
it kills him, has some for supper, smokes the rest, and takes it and
the goods, and departs to found new homes in another district.
The bush trade I have above sketched is the bush trade with the
Fans. In those districts on the southern banks of the Ogowe the
main features of the trade, and the trader's life are the same, but
the details are more intricate, for the Igalwa trader from
Lembarene, Fernan Vaz, or Njole, deals with another set of trading
tribes, not first hand with the collectors. The Fan villages on the
trade routes may, however, be regarded as trade depots, for to them
filters the trade stuff of the more remote villages, so the
difference is really merely technical, and in all villages alike the
same sort of thing occurs.
The Igalwa or M'pongwe trader arrives with the goods he has received
from the white trader, and there are great rejoicing and much uproar
as his chests and bundles and demijohns are brought up from the
canoe. And presently, after a great deal of talk, the goods are
opened. The chiefs of the village have their pick, and divide this
among the principal men of the village, who pay for it in part with
their store of collected rubber or ivory, and take the rest on
trust, promising to collect enough rubber to pay the balance on the
next visit of the trader. Thereby the trader has a quantity of
debts outstanding in each village, liable to be bad debts, and
herein lies his chief loss. Each chief takes a certain understood
value in goods as a commission for himself--nyeno--giving the
trader, as a consideration for this, an understood bond to assist
him in getting in the trust granted to his village. This nyeno he
utilises in buying trade stuff from villages not on the trade route.
Among the Fans the men who have got the goods stand by with these to
trade for rubber with the general public and bachelors of the
village, in a way I will presently explain. In tribes like Ajumbas,
Adooma, etc., the men having the goods travel off, as traders, among
their various bush tribes, similarly paying their nyeno, and so by
the time the goods reach the final producing men, only a small
portion of them is left, but their price has necessarily risen.
Still it is quite absurd for a casual white traveller, who may have
dropped in on the terminus of a trade route, to cry out regarding
the small value the collector (who is often erroneously described as
the producer) gets for his stuff, compared to the price it fetches
in Europe. For before it even reaches the factory of the Coast
Settlement, that stuff has got to keep a whole series of traders.
It appears at first bad that this should be the case, but the case
it is along the west coast of the continent save in the districts
commanded by the Royal Niger company, who, with courage and
enterprise, have pushed far inland, and got in touch with the great
interior trade routes--a performance which has raised in the breasts
of the Coast trader tribes who have been supplanted, a keen
animosity, which like most animosity in Africa, is not regardful of
truth. The tribes that have had the trade of the Bight of Biafra
passing through their hands have been accustomed, according to the
German Government who are also pressing inland, to make seventy-five
per cent. profit on it, and they resent being deprived of this. A
good deal is to be said in favour of their views; among other things
that the greater part of the seaboard districts of West Africa, I
may say every part from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, is structurally
incapable of being self-supporting under existing conditions. Below
Cameroon, on my beloved South-west coast, which is infinitely richer
than the Bight of Benin, rich producing districts come down to the
sea in most places until you reach the Congo; but here again the
middleman is of great use to the interior tribes, and if they do
have to pay him seventy-five per cent, serve them right. They
should not go making wife palaver, and blood palaver all over the
place to such an extent that the inhabitants of no village, unless
they go en masse, dare take a ten mile walk, save at the risk of
their lives, in any direction, so no palaver live.
We will now enter into the reason that induces the bush man to
collect stuff to sell among the Fans, which is the expensiveness of
the ladies in the tribe. A bush Fan is bound to marry into his
tribe, because over a great part of the territory occupied by them
there is no other tribe handy to marry into; and a Fan residing in
villages in touch with other tribes, has but little chance of
getting a cheaper lady. For there is, in the Congo Francais and the
country adjacent to the north of it (Batanga), a regular style of
aristocracy which may be summarised firstly thus: All the other
tribes look down on the Fans, and the Fans look down on all the
other tribes. This aristocracy has sub-divisions, the M'pongwe of
Gaboon are the upper circle tribe; next come the Benga of Corisco;
then the Bapuka; then the Banaka. This system of aristocracy is
kept up by the ladies. Thus a M'pongwe lady would not think of
marrying into one of the lower tribes, so she is restricted, with
many inner restrictions, to her own tribe. A Benga lady would marry
a M'pongwe, or a Benga, but not a Banaka, or Bapuka; and so on with
the others; but not one of them would marry a Fan. As for the men,
well of course they would marry any lady of any tribe, if she had a
pretty face, or a good trading connection, if they were allowed to:
that's just man's way. To the south-east the Fans are in touch with
the Bakele, a tribe that has much in common with the Fan, but who
differ from them in getting on in a very friendly way with the
little dwarf people, the Matimbas, or Watwa, or Akoa: people the
Fans cannot abide. With these Bakele the Fan can intermarry, but
there is not much advantage in so doing, as the price is equally
high, but still marry he must.
A young Fan man has to fend for himself, and has a scratchy kind of
life of it, aided only by his mother until--if he be an enterprising
youth--he is able to steal a runaway wife from a neighbouring
village, or if he is a quiet and steady young man, until he has
amassed sufficient money to buy a wife. This he does by collecting
ebony and rubber and selling it to the men who have been allotted
goods by the chief of the village, from the consignment brought up
by the black trader. He supports himself meanwhile by, if the
situation of his village permits, fishing and selling the fish, and
hunting and killing game in the forest. He keeps steadily at it in
his way, reserving his roysterings until he is settled in life. A
truly careful young man does not go and buy a baby girl cheap, as
soon as he has got a little money together; but works and saves on
until he has got enough to buy a good, tough widow lady, who,
although personally unattractive, is deeply versed in the lore of
trade, and who knows exactly how much rubbish you can incorporate in
a ball of india rubber, without the white trader, or the black bush
factory trader, instantly detecting it. When the Fan young man has
married his wife, in a legitimate way on the cash system, he takes
her round to his relations, and shows her off; and they make little
presents to help the pair set up housekeeping. But the young man
cannot yet settle down, for his wife will not allow him to. She is
not going to slave herself to death doing all the work of the house,
etc., and so he goes on collecting, and she preparing, trade stuff,
and he grows rich enough to buy other wives--some of them young
children, others widows, no longer necessarily old. But it is not
until he is well on in life that he gets sufficient wives, six or
seven. For it takes a good time to get enough rubber to buy a lady,
and he does not get a grip on the ivory trade until he has got a
certain position in the village, and plantations of his own which
the elephants can be discovered raiding, in which case a percentage
of the ivory taken from the herd is allotted to him. Now and again
he may come across a dead elephant, but that is of the nature of a
windfall; and on rubber and ebony he has to depend during his early
days. These he changes with the rich men of his village for a very
peculiar and interesting form of coinage--bikei--little iron
imitation axe-heads which are tied up in bundles called ntet, ten
going to one bundle, for with bikei must the price of a wife be
paid. You do not find bikei close down to Libreville, among the
Fans who are there in a semi-civilised 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 little 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 the matter of stone implements, that these
things, important of old, should survive, and be employed in the
matter of such an old and important affair as marriage. They thus
become ju-ju; and indeed all West African legitimate marriage,
although appearing to the casual observer a mere matter of barter,
is never solely such, but always has ju-ju in it.
We may as well here follow out the whole of the domestic life of the
Fan, now we have got him married. His difficulty does not only
consist in getting enough bikei together but in getting a lady he
can marry. No amount of bikei can justify a man in marrying his
first cousin, or his aunt; and as relationship among the Fans is
recognised with both his father and his mother, not as among the
Igalwa with the latter's blood relations only, 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 necessitate his putting down his gun outside his village
gatewa 
Travels in West Africa / Kingsley, Mary H., 1862-1900