taken up to Njole, where they are at present engaged in the
healthy and invigorating pursuit of navvying a stiff clay bank
in the interest of the government. «
The Samba natives are in no hurry for that job to be completed.
They are quite tired of that chief themselves, and
would have had to poison him off on their own account had.
not the Doctor intervened. In fact, every one is satisfied,
except the chief and the two head men, who have not acquired
a taste for manual labour yet.
The banks of the Ogowe just above Lembarene Island are
low ; with the forest only broken by village clearings and
seeming to press in on those, ready to absorb them should the
inhabitants cease their war against it. The blue mountains-
of Achango land show away to the E.S.E. in a range.
Behind us, gradually sinking in the distance, is the high land
on Lembarene Island.
Soon we run up alongside a big street of a village with
four high houses rising a story above the rest, which are
strictly ground floor; it has also five or six little low open
thatched huts along the street in front.1 These may be fetish
huts, or, as the captain of the Sparrow would say, “ again
they mayn’t.” For I have seen similar huts in the villages
round Libreville, which were store places for roof mats,
of which the natives carefully keep a store dry and ready for
emergencies in the way of tornadoes, or to sell. We stop
abreast of this village. Inhabitants in scores rush out and
form an excited row along the vertical bank edge, several of
the more excited individuals falling over it into the water.
Yells from our passengers on the lower deck. Yell? from inhabitants
on shore. Yells of vite, vite from the Captain.
Dogs bark, horns bray, some exhilarated individual thumps
the village drum, canoes fly out from the bank towards us.
Fearful scrimmage heard going on all the time on the deck
below. As soon as the canoes are alongside, our passengers
from the lower deck, with their bundles and their dogs, pour
1 The villages of the Fans and Bakele are built in the form of a street.
When in the forest there are two lines of huts, the one facing the other,
and each end closed by a guard house. When facing a river there is one
line of huts facing the river frontage.
over the side into them. Canoes rock wildly and wobble off
rapidly towards the bank, frightening the passengers because
they have got their best clothes on, and fear that the
Éclaireur will start and upset them altogether with her
wash.
On reaching the bank, the new arrivals disappear into brown
clouds of wives and relations, and the dogs into fighting
clusters of resident dogs. Happy, happy day ! For those men
who have gone ashore have been away on hire to the government
and factories for a year, and are safe home in the bosoms
of their families again, and not only they themselves, but all the
goods they have got in pay. The remaining passengers below
still yell to their departed friends ; I know not what they say,
. but I expect it’s the Fan equivalent for “ Mind you write.
Take care of yourself. Yes, I’ll come and see you soon,” &c.,,
&c. While all this is going on, the Éclaireur quietly slides
down river, with the current, broadside on as if she smelt her
stable at Lembarene. This I find is her constant habit whenever
the captain, the engineer, and the man at the wheel are
all busy in a row along the rail, shouting overside, which
occurs whenever we have passengers to land. Her iniquity
being detected when the last canoe load has left for the shore,
she is spun round and sent up river again at full speed. Just
as this is being done, the inhabitants of the country salute the
captain with a complimentary salvo of guns. I am quietly
leaning against the side of his cabin door at the time, when
bang comes his answering salute from out of it, within three-
and-a-half inches of my right ear. Sensation of stun for
minutes. Captain apologetic ; he “ did not know I was there.”
I am apologetic too ; I did know he was there, “ but I did
not know he was going to fire off his gun ? ” “ He is forgiven.”
“ N’est-ce pas ? ” “ Oui, oui, certainement,” say I, quoting the
engineer. Peace restored. ...
We go on up stream ; now and again stopping at little villages
to land passengers or at little sub-factories to discharge cargo,
until evening closes in, when we anchor and tie up at
O Saomokita, where there is a sub-factory of Messrs. Woer-
mann’s, in charge of which is a white man, the only white man
between Lembarene and Njole. He comes on board and looks