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, batter-like 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 Flsetz 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 Français, 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.
Pélessier, Père 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 Setta
Khama 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.
Particularly sure am I that I should never flourish under
the treatment Mr. MacTaggart habitually receives. I had
the pleasure of meeting him on my way home the other
day and found him quite convalescent from another overdose
of steel. He had gone, about six weeks previously with divers
other white men, on a perfectly peaceable mission into a town.
The treacherous inhabitants, after receiving them kindly and
talking the palaver, went for Mr. MacTaggart as the party
were returning to their boats, with sharpened cutlasses ; took
the top off his head, and a large chip out of the back of it,
and then, evidently knowing their man, proceeded to remove
him in his stunned condition into the bush on a door. They
there thought of taking off his head thoroughly, to make a Ju Ju
°f- The securing of the head of a notably brave man is a
great desideratum among West Coast tribes, and they thought