■country to take this from a traveller. While waiting about for
the Lafayette to get ready for sea, i.e., for the water bottles to
be refilled, I learn the cause of the weird howls and screams I
have heard during the night. A poor maniac who has run
from Gaboon to Cape Esterias haunts the rocky narrow beach
at night and flies from any one who approaches him to give
him food, or offer him shelter. He soon returns and hangs
about near the houses again and runs at night along the beach
screaming and moaning as he jumps about among the rocks.
hen I get on to the beach he is sitting playing on a rock,
not far off, tearing up a plantain leaf into shreds. I take
up some packages of aguma and biscuits, and softly and
cautiously make my way towards him, but he just lets me get
within a few yards and then is off with a howl, at a pace
which, if it holds, must by now have landed him on the shores of
Victoria Nyanza. In addition to this fortuitous lunatic, there
is at Cape Esterias a local one, quite the biggest black man I
■have ever seen ; he must be little short of seven feet high, and
his muscular development is such that he looks very heavily
built for his height. They tell me he is a slave who was
•brought in his youth, like most Benga slaves, from one of the
Fernan Vaz tribes, and is quite harmless and hard-working,
but quite mad, “ some witch has stolen one of his souls.” I
have seen it stated that insanity is almost unknown among the
Africans ; I can truly say I have never stayed any time in
a district among them without coming across several cases of
it. In the Rivers, indeed among all the true negro tribes, it is
customary to kill lunatics off. On the South-West Coast
insanity usually takes the form of malignant melancholy
and they kill themselves off. Amongst the Kacongo and
Bas-congo tribes, this suicide is at times almost an epidemic,
and it is there customary when a man shows symptoms of its
coming on by hanging himself, without rhyme or reason, about
the place or by trying to knock his brains out against a
post, for a family conclave to be held. The utter folly of
his proceedings are then pointed out to him by his relations,
•as only relations can point it out, and should he after this still’
persist in attempting to kill himself, spoiling things, and dis-*
turbmg people, the job is taken off his hands and his relations
-club him on the head, and throw the body in the river, so
“palaver done set.” These Benga and M’pongwe people seem
just to let lunatics alone, though to their credit be it said they
had tried to feed this poor fellow from Gaboon, because, they
^said, they feared he would starve. When lunatics are dangerous
they secure them to trees by a chain. There was one, I am
told, chained near Glass a long time, but one night he broke
loose and was never heard of again.
I should say my lady passenger left here. I fancy she had
had enough of the Lafayette. She said she $ would walk the
rest of the way,” which may be translated into she’d write to
Mr. A. L. Jones. We get out through the breakers and hoist
-our mainsail and beat along among the rollers, rolling ourselves
like mad as the heavy waves sweep broadside on under us.
Just off the Cape itself we have to run almost out of smell of
land, to get round a rock reef; I am bound to confess the
consequences of this spirited display of seamanship are not
■encouraging. A terrific marine phenomenon exhibits itself
suddenly off our weather bow, at a distance of fifteen to
-twenty feet. My first opinion is that it is the blow-up of
a submarine volcano, not because I am a specialist in marine
volcanic methods, having never seen one out of a picture-book,
but this is very like the picture-book, waves and foam and
flying water. In another second it explains itself completely,
for out of the centre of it springs aloft the immense
fluke of a great whale, as high as our mainmast. It swings
round with a flourish and then comes flop down on To and into
the broken sea, sending sheets of water over us and into the
boat. We bale hard all, and stand by for another performance,
but, to my intense relief, we see the whale blow, a few
minutes later a good distance off, and then have another
flourish—-a most charming spectacle on the horizon. My crew
then say, as they take the baling easier, it is a common
affair in Corisco Bay just about now, for it is the courting
time for whales. I don’t come again into Corisco Bay in
■canoes or small craft while any of that wretched foolishness is
going on. They also tell me that the other day four people
coming from Cape Esterias to Gaboon in a canoe were
drowned, all hands, and they think they must have fallen in