like note, and the ubiquitous Wu-tu-tu, the clock bird, so
called from its regular habit of giving the cry, from which its
native name comes, every two hours during the night,
commencing at 4 P.M. and going off duty at 6 A.M.
On my return home, I find Mr. Hudson is back from the
gowe on the Move, unaltered since ’93, I am glad to say.
rif* ‘GlIS •me ^°OC* ^>°m Joac^ m de Sousa Coutinho e
Chichorro is dead, and his wife Donna Anna, and her sister
Donna Maria de Sousa Coutinho, my valued friends, have
returned from Kabinda to Lisbon.
28th. Go to west side of Libreville shell-hunting; after
passing through the town, and in front of the mango-tree
embowered mission station of the Espiritu Santo, the road
runs along close to the sea, through a beautiful avenue of cocoa-
palms. Then there is a bridge, and a little beyond this the
road ends, and so I take to the sandy sea-shore for a mile
or so.
The forest fringes the sand, rising in a wall of high
trees, not mangroves; and here and there a stinking stream
comes out from under them, and here and there are masses-
of shingle-formed conglomerate and stratified green-gray rock.
Beyond Libreville there are several little clearings in the
forest with a native town tucked into them, the inhabitants
of which seem a happy and contented generation mainly
devoted to fishing, and very civil. On my walk back I notice
the people getting water from the stinking streams ; small
wonder the mortality is high in Libreville: this is usually
attributed to the inhabitants “ going it,” but they might “ go
it ” more than they do, without killing themselves if they left
off drinking this essence of stinking slime.
29A&.— Went to see Mrs. Gault and Dr. Nassau, who
says the natives have a legend of a volcano about sixty
miles from here.
30A&.— Mrs. Gault asks me to go with her to a Bible meeting,
held by a native woman. I assent, I go ; Mrs. Sarah, the
Biblewoman, is- a very handsome, portly lady who speaks
English very well. There are besides her, Mrs. Gault and
myself, eight or nine native women, and two men. Hymns
are sung in M’pongwe, one with a rousing chorus of “ Gory
we, gory we, pro pa reary gory we.” This M’pongwe does
not sound so musical as the Effik. Sarah gives an extempore
prayer however, which is very beautiful in sound, and she intones
it most tastefully. But I confess my mind is distracted
by a malignant-looking pig which hovel's round us as we
kneel upon the sand. I well remember Captain being
chivied by a pig in the confines of Die Grosse Colonie, and
then there is the chance of ants and so on up one’s
ankles. Mrs. Gault gives an address which Sarah translates
into M’pongwe, and then come more hymns, and the meeting
closes, and the ladies settle down and have a quiet pipe and a
chat. We then saunter off and visit native Christians’ houses.
Many houses here are built in clumps round a square, but
this form of arrangement seems only a survival, for I find
there is no necessary relationship among the people living in
the square as there is in Calabar: and so home.
3 i-rA— Start out at 2.30 and walk through the grass
country behind Baraka, and suddenly fall down into a strange
place.
On sitting up after the shock consequent on an unpremeditated
descent of some thirteen feet or so, I find myself in
a wild place; before me are two cave-like cavities, with
a rough wood seat in each; behind me another similar cavity
or chamber; the space I am in is about three feet wide; to
the left this is terminated by an earth w a ll; to the right it
goes, as a path, down a cutting or trench which ends in dry
grass.
No sign of human habitation. Are these sacrifice places, I
wonder, or are they places where those Fans one hears so
much about, come and secretly eat human flesh? Clearly they
are not vestiges of an older civilisation. In fact, what in the
world are they ? I investigate and find they are nothing in
the world more than markers’ pits for a rifle range.
Disgust, followed by alarm, seizes me ; those French authorities
may take it into their heads to think I am making plans
;of their military works ! Visions of incarceration flash before my
eyes, and I fly into more grass and ticks, going westwards
until I pick up a path, and following this, find myself in a little
village. In the centre of the street, see the strange arrow