one of the many little bays or indentations in the coast-line
where the sea is breaking, we clamber up the bank and turn
inland, still ankle deep in sand, and go through this museum
of physical geography. First a specimen of grass land, then
along a lane of thickly pleached bush, then down into a wood
with a little (at present) nearly dried up swamp in its recesses ,
then up out on to an open heath which has recently been
burnt and is covered with dead bracken and scorched oil
palms; then through a village into grass again, and back to
the beach to plough our way through seaweed across another
bay ; then round some remarkable rocks, up into a wood, then
grass, and more bush and more beach, and up among a cluster
of coco-palms, more grass; and then a long stretch of path
with one side of it . a thick hedge which is encroaching in a
way that calls for energetic lopping, for the bush leans so
across the path that you also have to lean at an angle of nearly
45° towards the other side. I begin to despair,, my boots
being full of sand, and to fear we shall never get through the
specimens before nightfall. There is such an air of elaborate
completeness about this museum, and we have not even commenced
the glacier or river departments. However, at length
we see what seems to be the entrance to an English park,
and coming up to this find a beautiful avenue of mango
trees.
Corisco evidently feels the dry season severely. The dry
sandy soil is thickly strewn with dead leaves. A t the end of
the avenue there is a pretty wooden house, painted white, with
its doors and window-frames painted a bold bright blue.
Around it are a cluster of outbuildings like it, each mounted
on poles, the little church, the store, and the house for the
children in the mission school. A troop of children rush out
and greet Eveke effusively. One of them, I am informed, is
his brother, and he commences to bubble'out conversation in
Benga. I send Eveke off to find his mother, thinking, he will
like to get his greetings with her over unobserved, and after a
few minutes/she comes forward to greet me,— a pretty, bright-
looking lady whom it is hard to’ believe old enough to be
Evekq’s mother; and not only Eveke’s but the mother of a
lot.of: Strapping, young women who come forward with her,
and the grandmother of other strapping young women
mixed up among them. I must really try and find out which
is which. Until T do so perhaps it will be diplomatic to
regard them all as her daughters. Mrs. Ibea insists, in the
kindliest way possible, on my taking possession of her own
room. . Mr. Ibea is away, she says, on an evangelising visit to
the mainland, at Cape St. John ,(the northern extremity of
Corisco Bay), intending to call at Eloby Island ; so he may not
be here for some days, and she promptly gives me tea and
alligator pears, both exceedingly welcome.
The views from the windows of my clean and comfortable
room are very beautiful. The house stands on a high promontory
called Alondo Point, the turning point of the south
and west sides of the island, and almost overhangs the sea.
A reef of rock runs out at the foot of the cliff for about a mile,
on which the sea breaks constantly. The great rollers of the
South Atlantic, meeting here their first check since they left
Cape Horn and the Americas, fly up in sheets of foam with a
never-ending thunder. I go to bed early, thankfully observing
that the gay mosquito curtain is entirely “ for dandy ”—
decorative and not defensive.
The obtaining of specimens of fish from the lakes in the
centre of the island being my main object in visiting Corisco,
I set to work by starting immediately after breakfast to the
bay that we came to last night, and which I will call Nassau
Bay in future. I go along the same variegated path I came
by yesterday. Eveke has slept at the village in the Bay
among his relatives so as to keep an eye, he says, on the
Lafayette. When I find him, he says that only women can
catch the lake fish, and that they always catch them in
certain baskets, and as these have to be made they cannot be
ready to-day. Having heard Corisco is famous for shells, and
having seen nothing on any of the many beaches on the
southern side of the island more conchologically charming
than half a dozen dilapidated whelks, I ask where the main
deposits of shells are. Eveke says there is any quantity of
them on the other little islands, Laval to the south, and Bana
to the S.E. in Corisco Bay. To his horror I say I will go to
those islands now, and we get our scattered crew together and
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