On the nth, at noon, after a last little banquet
and songs, hearty cheers, innumerable toasts
and fervid claspings of friendly hands, we embarked.
An hour before sunset the “ big iron
canoe,” after a descent of about thirty-five miles
hauled in-shore, on the right bank, and made
fast to the pier of another of Hatton and Cook-
son’s factories at Ponta da Lenha, or Wooded
Point. Two or three other Portuguese factories
are in close neighbourhood to it, lightening the
gloom of the background of black mangrove
and forest.
After a very agreeable night with our hospitable
English host, the Kabinda was again under
way.
The puissant river below Boma femilided me
of the scenes above Uyanzi; the colour of the
water, the numerous islands, and the enormous
breadth recalled those days when we had sought
the liquid wildernesses of the Livingstone, to
avoid incessant conflicts with the human beasts
of prey in the midst of Primitive Africa, and at
the sight my eyes filled with tears at the thought
that I could not recall my lost friends, and bid
them share the rapturous joy that now filled
the hearts of all those who had endured and
survived.
A few hours later and we were gliding through
the broad portal into the Ocean, the blue domain
of civilization!
fAug. ■», i8.771 THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 233
[ The Atlantic. J
Turning to take a farewell- glance at the
mighty River on whose brown bosom we had
! endured so greatly, I saw it approach, awed
and humbled, the threshold of the watery immensity,
to whose immeasurable volume and illimitable
expanse, awful as had been its power, and
terrible as had been its fury, its flood was but
a drop. And I felt my heart suffused with
purest gratitude to Him whose hand had protected
us, and who had enabled us to pierce
the Dark Continent from east to west, and to
trace its mightiest River to its Ocean bourne.