head-shaped board mounted on a rough easel and alongside it
a bundle of stakes, the whole affair clearly connected with
making palm oil, and identical with the contrivance I saw in
the far-away Fan village on Sunday morning.
Investigate, find the boiled palm nuts are put into a pineapple
fibre bag, which is hung on the board, then stakes are
wedged in between the uprights of the easel, so as to squeeze
the bag, one stake after another being put in to increase the
pressure. The oil runs out, and off the point of the arrow-
shaped board into a receptacle placed to receive it.
The next object of interest is a piece of paper stuck on a
stick at the further end of the villages. The inscription is of
interest though evidently recent. Find it is “ No thoroughfare.”'
There is a bamboo gateway at this end, and so I go through
it and find myself to my surprise on the Woermann farm
road, and down this I go, butterfly hunting. Presently I
observe an old gentleman with a bundle of bamboos watching
me intently. Not knowing the natives of this country yet, I
feel anxious, and he, in a few minutes without taking his eyes
off me, crouches in the grass. I remember my great tutor
Captain Boler of Bonny’s maxim : “ Be afraid of an African if
you can’t help it, but never show it anyhow,” so I walk on
intending to pass him with a propitiatory M’bolo.1 As I get
abreast of him he hisses out “ Look him ; ” he’s evidently got
something in the grass; Heaven send it’s not a snake, but I
“ look him,”-— a lizard ! The good soul understood collecting,
and meant well from the first. I give him tobacco and a selection
of amiable observations, and he beams and we go on down
the road together, discussing the proper time to burn grass,
and the differences in the practical value, for building purposes,
of the two kinds of bamboo. Then coming to a path that
runs evidently in the direction of the Plateau at Libreville,
and thinking it’s time I was tacking homewards, I say “ good
b y e ” to my companion, and turn down the path. “ You sabe
’em road ? ” says he in a very questioning voice : I say “ yes ”
airily, and keep on down it.
The path goes on through grass, and then makes for a
hollow— wish it didn’t, for hollows are horrid at times, and
1 The M’pongwe greeting ; meaning, “ May you live long ”
evidently this road has got something against it somewhere,
and is not popular, for the grass falls across it like unkempt
hair. Road becomes damp and goes into a belt of trees, in
the middle of which runs a broad stream with a log laid across
it. Congratulating myself on absence of companions, ignomini-
ously crawl across on to the road, which then and there turns
round and goes back to the stream again higher up— evidently
a joke, “ thought-you-were-going-to-get-home-dry-did-you ”
sort of thing. Wade the stream, rejoin the road on the hither
side. Then the precious thing makes a deliberate bolt for the
interior of Africa, instead of keeping on going to Libreville.
I lose confidence in it. The Wu-tu-tu says it’s four o’clock.
It’s dark at 6.15 down here, and I am miles from home, so I
begin to wish I had got an intelligent companion to guide me,
as I walk on through the now shoulder-high grass. Suddenly
another road branches off to the left. “ Saved ! ” Down
it I go, and then it ends in a manioc patch, with no path
out the other end, and surrounded by impenetrable bush.
Crestfallen, I retrace my steps and continue along my old tormentor,
which now attempts to reassure me by doubling round
to the left and setting off again for Libreville. I am not
deceived, I have had my trust in it too seriously tampered with
E-Yes, it’s up to mischief again, and it turns itself into a stream.
Nothing for it but wading, so wade ; but what will be its next
manifestation, I wonder? for I begin to doubt whether it is a road
at all, and suspect it of being only a local devil, one of the sort
that sometimes appears as a road, sometimes as a tree or a
stream, &c. I wonder what they will do if they find I don’t
get in to-night?— wish me— at Liverpool, at least. After
a quarter of an hour’s knee-deep wading, I suddenly meet
a native lady who was at the Bible meeting. She has a grand
knowledge of English, and she stands with her skirt tucked
up round her, evidently in no hurry, and determined to definitely
find out who I am. Recognising this, I attempt to take
charge of the conversation, and divert its course. “ Nice
road this,” I say, I but it’s a little damp.” “ Washey, ma,”
she says, “ b u t ” “ Is this road here to go anywhere,” I
interposed, “ or is it only a kind of joke ? ” “ It no go
nowhere ticular, ma,” she says ; “ but —|— ” “ In a civilise