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 Rembw6 River. I made for it,
taking small notice of the hubbub our arrival occasioned,
and passed through the gateway to its bank ; then, setting
its guarding bell ringing violently, I stood on the steep,
black, mud slime bank, surrounded by a noisy crowd. It
is a big 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 i t ; it is up on the hill.” This showed
Messrs. Holt’s local factory to be no bigger than Ugumu’s. A t
this point a big, scraggy, very black man with an irregularly
formed face the size of a tea-tray and looking generally as if he
had come out of a pantomime on the Arabian Nights, dashed
through the crowd, shouting, “ I’m for Holty, I’m for Holty.”
“ This is my trade, you go ’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 h e ; 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 h e ; 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 or
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 Jloreate, 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
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