CH APTER X IV
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, làzy, 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. What I
do know is that he can sing “ Partant pour la Syrie” with
intense power and a penetrating pathos in the depths of the
night. But I do not chronicle this as a discovery of my own ;
it was common knowledge to every sentient being within a
radius of half a mile of the factory.
Mosquitoes here we met again : some one ought to go into
the local distribution of mosquitoes in Congo Français instead
of just saying hard things about them. I leave the work for a
nobler soul than mine, and to assist him, note the fact that they
are simply awful throughout all Kama country and Ouroungou.
Up at Lembarene, which is above Kama country, they are worse,
and remain so until you get to Osamokita ; there they cease
from troubling— although there is still a stretch of flat country
and a supply of stagnant water in the shape of small lakes ; I
say this regretfully, but science is truth. I once had a nice
little theory, that worked well in the Niger Delta, that you
never had mosquitoes if you had a 4-knot current water supply ;
unless you bred the said mosquitoes for yourself, in tanks or
barrels ; because, said the theory, the larva got washed away
down. But although the Ogowé has a 4-knot current twice over
at Osamokita, and there are no mosquitoes ; still there are those
lakes in the forest at the back of it; so any one who can patch
that theory up, and make it go again, is welcome to it. Again regarding
mosquito distribution, there’s a pretty solid fog of them
from Kangwe to Arevooma, from Arevooma on to Lake Ncovi,
and at Lake Ncovi they-Àbut it’s no use my writing down my
opinion about mosquitoes in Lake Ncovi because no one will
print it. When we left Ncovi, and got well into the forest, we
missed them, and were no more troubled with them, until we
got here to Agonjo, where there is not a 4-knot current ; but I
will not revert to that, and merely remark a peculiarity I have
observed in mosquitoes since I have been so much in touch with
them in Congo Français, and that is that they evidently feed on
oil ; several— many hundreds that I have crushed have left quite
a pool of oil— I presume palm oil, but it may be animal fat. I
should remark before leaving this subject that there are two
schools in this district which quarrel much over the merits of their
separate methods of destroying mosquitoes— the Flappists and
the Crushers. I am a Crusher, holding it better to allow the
vermin to get a hold, and his entire mind set on blood, and
then to descend on him quietly, but firmly, with a finger ; as for
those heretics the Flappists they always hurt themselves, and
frequently fail to bag their game, by their more showy
methods.
I really thought that I was again getting a chance to secure
a valuable specimen of spectra domestica— or the common
domestic ghost— the first night in Agonjo. I held it to be the
ghost of a carpenter, for it made a continuous sawing noise in
the bamboo wall by the side of my bed, but again. I was disappointed
: it was only the usual rat. This enterprising rodent
indeed was a fellow collector, and had stolen the bladder off