manship, 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, &c. 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 any time,
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—fi?-
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 2^rd.-diAm 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 merx
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 o f
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 Twill take home before I mention even
its approximate spread of wing.1 There are also noble
1 Since my return home I have read that rather rare and very charming
book, Ten Years’ Wanderings among the Ethiopians, by T. J. Hutchinson,,
a gentleman who was for a long time H.B.M. Consul in Calabar. He-
also has heard of this bird, which was described as “ measuring five
fathoms, i.e., thirty feet,—from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other..
Its beak is a fathom, or six feet long. No man dares to go near it, and nogun
fit to kill it. Its favourite food is obtained by killing the elephant,,
whose eyes it devours.” Mr. Hutchinson goes on to say that “ inquiring
the colour of the bird’s plumage the answer I received—namely, that its-
feathers were green,” made me shut my note-book, with a “ mental
reservation” as to the ignorance of Baron Cuvier (p. 242). I am not
going bail for these measurements being correct to an inch or so, and.
must state that the bird is not green but brown and gray, and the noise
it makes when settling in the forest trees over one’s head is very greatr
but for further particulars, you must wait until I or some other W e s t
Coaster brings home a specimen, and then !