shroud the Sierra del Cristal. I very rarely met anynatives
in this part; those that I did were hunters, ig, I _
with all their toilet attention concentrated on their ham
two occasions I ran some risk from having een s a
mistake for game by these hunters. “ Hoots toots, mon, a verra
pretty thing it would hae been for an Englis woma
been shot in mistake for a gorilla by a cannibal Fan
folks,” was a Scotch friend’s commentary. I escaped, how
ever, because these men get as close as they can °
prey before firing; and when they found out thar m,take
they were not such cockney sportsmen as to 1
was something qneer, and we stood and M W i
said a few words in our respective languages, and parted
One thing that struck me very much m these forests was
the absence of signs of fetish worship which are so much in
evidence in Calabar, where you constantly come across trees
worshipped as the residences of spirits, and little huts put up
over offerings to bush souls.
Thanks to the kindness of M. Forget, I had an opportunity
of visiting Talagouga Island— a grant of which has been made
by the French Government to the Mission Evangdhque, who,
owing to the inconveniences of being hitched precariously on a
hillside, intend shortly removing from their present situation,
and settling on the island.
Talagouga Island is situated in the middle of #j£j§jjf
about halfway between the present mission beach and Njole.
It is a mile long and averages about a quarter of a mile wide,
the up-river end of it is a rocky low hill, and it tapers down
river from this, ending in a pretty little white sandbank.
A t the upper end there is a reef of black rocks against which
the Ogowe strikes, its brown face turning white with
agitation at being interrupted, when it is in such a tearing
hurry to get to the South Atlantic. When going up river to it
in a canoe, creeping up along by the bank, I had more chance
o f seeing details than when on the Eclaireur with her amusing
distractions. The first object of interest was Talagouga
rock • seen at close quarters, it rises a gray, rough, weathered
head much water-worn, some twenty feet above the dry
season level of the water. Goodness knows how far it is down
to its bed on the river bottom. Up to a few years ago it was
regarded as the mark between the regions of Gaboon and
Congo Français, but .this division is now done away with,
and there is no Gaboon, but the whole province is Congo
Français. So Talagouga rock gets no official position, and
is left to the veneration it is held in, as the dwelling-place of
an Ombuiri. On the edge on the top of the bank, adjacent
to Talagouga rock, is a small swamp, and by the side
of it stands another gigantic monolith which, judging the
height of Talagouga rock above water to be twenty feet, must
be between fifty and sixty feet high. It does not get any
veneration at all ; but if that great Stonehenge-like thing'
were in the Rivers, it would be a great ju-ju, and be covered
round its base with bits of white calico, and have bottles of
gin set in front of it, and calabashes of hard-boiled eggs and
goodness knows what. That rock is thrown away on these
Bantu ; that comes of being magnificent at the wrong time
and place. Opposite to Talagouga rock, on the other bank,
is ¡perched on top of a dwarf clay cliff the village of
Talagouga (Fan) with Hatton and Cookson’s sub-factory in
it, presided over by a Sierra Leonian. On the north bank,
a little higher up, M. Forget pointed out to me a place in the
forest where, a year or two ago, the strange dwarf people had
a village ; there are none of them there now, as they wander
to and fro in the forest, never remaining many months in one
spot. They are diffused, in small communities, all over the
forest of Congo Français ; but their chief haunt seems to be
among the Bakele tribe in Achangoland. We crossed the river
and then landed, clambering up a steep bank on to the lower end
of the island. M. Forget stated that a path ran up to the
upper end, which had been cut when the island was surveyed
before being registered to the mission. I did not think much
of it as a path, nor did M. Forget, I fancy, after ten minutes’
experience of it, for it had considerably grown up : and
although this island is not quite so densely timbered as the
mainland, nor made in such acute angles, still it has these
attributes to a considerable extent, as it is a real island of
a rocky nature, and not a glorified sandbank that has grabbed
its earth and vegetation from shipwrecked pieces of the
M 2 '