through successions of choice spots. Many of his districts
have not been revisited. In a few I was his immediate
successor.
By ill-luck M. Du Chaillu on both journeys just missed
striking the main stream of the Ogowd, but he knew that it
was there, and the information he brought back of the existence
of a great river whose delta he recognised he had been
exploring, was received in France with a more proper spirit
MOUNT LOPE, OGOWÉ.
than in England or Germany; and in 1862 MM. Serval,
Bellay, and Griffon were commanded by the French government
to trace the Nazareth, which Du Chaillu regarded as
the chief mouth of his great river. This they did almost to
the bend of it by Eliva z’onlange (called by Du Chaillu
Anengue) ; but they failed to reach the junction of the Ogowe
(called by Du Chaillu the Okanda) with the great river
discovered by Du Chaillu, the Ngunie, which junction he
had surmised occurred. The confluence of these two rivers,
as I have already described, is just above Lembarene, some
twenty miles from the point this expedition reached. M.
Serval, however, after the return of the expedition to Gaboon,
made another attempt, and crossed by land from the Gaboon
to the Ogowé, reaching Orongo a little above Osoamokita,
definitely proving that the Gaboon estuary was not a mouth
of the Ogowé and quite disconnected from it. In 1864
another expedition sent by the French Government succeeded
in reaching the confluence of the Ngunie with the Ogowé
(the Ngouyai with the Okanda of Du Chaillu). From those
days, up to the time of de Brazza, the most important worker on
the Ogowé has been Mr. R. B. N. Walker, of whose journey
I regret to say no full account has been published, for it
was a most remarkable one, undertaken before the Fans
on the river bank had been overawed by M. de Brazza,
Mr. Walker reached Lope, the furthest point attained until de
Brazza’s 1889 journey, and in addition to this, made many exploring
expeditions in the region.1 Then come the missionary
journeys of Dr. Nassau, who was well-established up at
Talagouga2 with his house and church built when de Brazza
came by in 1879. Since the latter opened up the district, the
only travellers I know of, passing through the region up the
Ogowé rapids, are MM. Alegret and Tesseris, who made a
journey right up the Ogowé and out on to the Congo with a
view to selecting a site for mission stations, and to these
gentlemen I am indebted for many photographs of native
types on the Upper Ogowé. Financial reasons have, I believe,
militated against the establishment of further stations above
Talagouga by the Mission Évangélique, to which these gentlemen
belong ; and this station, and a Roman Catholic Mission
1 Since my return to England, feeling much interested in the travels of
Mr. Walker, I have hunted up several papers by him scattered among
the transactions of various societies circa 1876, and from them fully recognise
the great loss to our knowledge of the actual geography and
ethnology of this region, that we suffer from Mr. Walker never having
collected and published in book form the results of his travels and
residence in Congo Français.
2 The natives sometimes call it Otalamaguga. Aguga means want,
privation, hardship.