top of an extensive shoal, running in most directions for miles,
but particularly eastwards and southwards. Mail steamers
that come in to call at Messrs. Holt’s factory on little Eloby,
and off the mouth of the Muni River where Hatton and
Cookson have a factory, come into Corisco Bay, from the north,
round to the east of the Eloby islands, and leave by the same
channel, which averages six fathoms; and go south, if they
want to, well outside to the west of all Corisco Bay’s banks.
I do not know why little Eloby Island should be the inhabited
one. Big Eloby is a fine, likely-looking island. I was told by
a Benga on Cape Esterias that it was once inhabited, but there
was a war and the inhabitants were killed and carried off as
slaves, and it has not since been re-colonised.
The northern part of the bay I have had no personal experience
in navigating, but, according to the “ Pilot ” it has its
drawbacks, and according to people who have to work it,
these drawbacks are by no means down in all their beauty in
the charts. It was in this bay that the Benguella struck on a
something. I cannot be more definite because some of my
friends who ought to know say it was a wreck— the old wreck
of the McGregor L a ird ; others, who ought to know, say it
was rocks ; anyhow she tore, then and there, a big wound in
herself, and nothing but the fine seamanship of Captain Evers-
field ever got her up into Cameroons River and successfully
beached her and repaired her there. During her convalescence
she was the haven of refuge for the unfortunate white folk of
Cameroon while the mutiny of the Dahomeyan soldiers went
on ashore in 1894.
There is another wreck not down in the chart, just off Alondo,
the south-east point of Corisco Island ; it is that of the schooner
Elfie, belonging to the American Presbyterian Mission.
This Corisco Bay, when you look at it on the map, seems an
ideally formed harbour, and I once heard it strongly recommended
as a suitable site for a coaling station ; but a glance
at its chart will show you it is only a subtly rock-set trap for
vessels, imperfect as the chart is. Its width is thirty-five miles
south by west and three-quarters west. This line touches the
eastern end of Corisco Island, and eastwards of it the bay is
fourteen miles deep.
Two rivers fall into Corisco Bay, the Muni and the Moondah.
The latter runs up behind Libreville. There is a creek, the
entrance to which is on the right-hand bank, n e a r the mouth ot
the Moondah as you enter ; this runs behind Cape Esterias, in
a south-east direction, and nearly communicates with the
Gaboon estuary ; so nearly that it is possible to utilise it as a
short cut to Corisco Bay from Libreville, it being possible to
drag a boat over the intervening strip of -land.
The Muni is a longer and more important river than the
Moondah ; its outfall is north of it, opposite little Eloby Island,
on the mainland shore- On a chart it looks like the usua
African river turned upside down, its upper course being sp it
up into several streams instead of its lower. Both these rivers,
like many others in this region, rise in the range of the Sierra
del Cristal, an enormous belt of mountainous country the
eastern limitations of which are at present unexplored.
A few great rivers cut through this range from sources beyond
the Sierra, such as the Ogowe and the joint streams of
the Mbam and Sanaga which come into the Atlantic under the
names of the O’Bengo and the Boungo. The ranges round the
Ogowe are the best known parts of the Sierra del Cristal; for the
Ogowe places at the traveller’s disposal a path, such as I have
partially described, through 5° ° miles of i t ; and the Ogowe s
chief affluent, the Nguni, cuts through it again from Samba
sputh-eastwards ; and the Okanda’s course lies, as far as t at
river has been ascended, in the very heart of it, going away
north-east. It is a range of old volcanic origin, running in
series of ridges parallel to each other, and following the long
line of the continent. Its general trend is north-west and
south-east. It comes down almost to the sea beach behind
Batanga, and the beautiful little Loway River falls from a
small cliff some twenty or thirty feet high belonging to, it on
to the sea shore itself.
It is this range which gives the coast from Cameroon to
Landana the marked superiority in beauty it possesses
over the rest of the West Coast; excepting, of course, the
splendours of Ambas Bay, which is a thing apart and out of
all keeping with the Coast. These western ridges of the
Sierra make a beautiful purple blue background to the splendid