I f any one can suggest a better I shall be only too delighted,
for it was laborious work, and these choice spots are
anything but uncommon in West African rivers. Then I remember
another steam lanch— the Dragon Fly. She had been
built for coal, but there was no coal, so she had to burn wood.
Wood, as my nautical friends would say, blows a ship out, and
to store enough wood to go twenty miles you had to have
wood billets everywhere; all over the deck, and on top of the
sun-deck, &c., to such an extent that there was no room for you,
and the gunwale was nearly awash. Then you always got on
a sandbank, several sandbanks, so the wood got burnt right
up before you got anywhere you wanted to, and you had to
return by the current and the help of poles. I f I had
been bound to go on in her, we must have spent the greater
part of our lives wood-chopping in wet forests; but I am of
too nervous a disposition to penetrate the interior on the
Dragon Fly with her dilapidated boiler.
Then there was a patent launch that progressed theoretically
by the explosion of small quantities of gunpowder; but
the trade powder we had did not suit her somehow, so she
pursued a policy of masterly inactivity, making awesome
noises in her works, and the quickest trip she ever did was to
the bottom. And she certainly did make that on trade
powder. I own I am prejudiced against launches. The heat
of the West Coast climate is quite enough for me without
having a large hot water bottle, in the shape of a boiler, to sit
by. And a canoe is a craft you can take almost anywhere,
and is therefore better for general work, unless you have a
good deep channel large enough for you to have a steamer of
a respectable size.
In addition to grass creeks and sandbanks, the obstacles
to the navigation of side streams, on the Ogowe and its
neighbouring rivers are swamps of papyrus, exceedingly
lovely, but difficult to get through, and great floating masses of
river lettuce (Pistia stratiotes). It is very like a nicely grown
cabbage lettuce, and it is very charming when you look down
a creek full of it, for the beautiful tender green makes a
perfect picture against the dark forest that rises from the
banks of the creek. If you are in a canoe, it gives you little
apprehension to know you have got to go through it, but if
you are in a small steam launch, every atom of pleasure in its
beauty goes, the moment you lay eye on the thing. You
dash into it as hard as you can go, with a sort of geyser of
lettuces flying up from the screw; but not for long, for this
interesting vegetable grows after the manner of couch-grass.
I used to watch its method of getting on in life. Take
a typical instance: a bed of river-lettuces growing in a creek
become bold, and grow out into the current, which tears the
UPPER OGOWE NATIVES.
outsider pioneer lettuce off from the mat. Down river that
young thing goes, looking as innocent as a turtle-dove. I f
you pick it up as it comes by your canoe and look underneath,
you see it has just got a stump. Roots ? Oh dear no 1
What does a sweet green rose like that want roots for ? It
only wants to float about on the river and be happy; so you
put the precious humbug back, and it drifts away with a smile
and gets up some suitable quiet inlet and then sends out
roots galore longitudinally, and'at every joint on them buds