 Part 2 of Chapter 6, LEMBARENI OF TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA. Now I will ask the surviving reader, who has waded through this desertation on cookery if something should not be done to improve the degraded condition of the Bantu cooking culture. Not for his physical delectation only, but because his present methods are bad for his morals and drive the men to drink, let alone assisting in riveting him in the practice of polygamy, which the missionary parties say is an exceedingly bad practice for him to follow. The interrelationship of these two subjects may not seem on the face of it very clear, but interrelationships of customs very rarely are. I will remember M. Jakot coming home one day at Kangwe from an evangelizing visit to some adjacent fan-towns, and saying he had had given to him that afternoon a new reason for polygamy, which was that it enabled a man to get enough to eat. This sounds sinister from a notoriously cannibal tribe, but the explanation is that the fans are an exceedingly hungry tribe and require a great deal of providing for. It is their custom to eat about ten times a day when in village and the men spend most of their time in the paliver houses at each end of the street, the women bringing them bowls of food of one kind or another all day long. When the men are away in the forest, rubber or elephant hunting and have to cook their own food, they cannot get quite so much, but when I have come across them on these expeditions, they halted pretty regularly every two hours, and had a substantial snack, and the gorge they all go in for after a successful elephant hunt is a thing to see once. There are other reasons which lead to the prevalence of this custom besides the cooking. One is that it is totally impossible for one woman to do the whole work of a house. Look after the children, prepare and cook the food, prepare the rubber, carry the same to the markets, fetch the daily supply of water from the stream, cultivate the plantations, etc., etc. Perhaps I should say it is impossible for the dillatory African woman, for I once had an Irish charwoman who drank, who would have done the whole week's work of an African village in an afternoon, and then been quite fresh enough to knock some of the nonsense out of her husband's head with that of the broom, and throw a kettle of boiling water or a paraffin lamp at him, if she suspected him of flirting with other ladies. That woman, who deserves fame in the annals of her country, was named Harrigan. She has attained immortality some years since by falling downstairs one Saturday night, from excitement arising from the images. Mr. Harrigan, conduct, but we have no Mrs. Harrigan in Africa. The African lady does not care a traveling white smith's execration if her husband does flirt, so long as he does not go and give to other women the cloth, etc., that she should have. The more wives the less work says the African lady, and I have known men who would rather have had one wife and spent the rest of the money on themselves in a civilized way, driven into polygamy by the women, and of course the state of affairs is most common in non-slave-holding tribes like the Fen. Mission work was first opened upon the Ogoe by Dr. Nassou, the great pioneer and explorer of these regions. He was acting for the American Presbyterian society, but when the French government demanded education in French in the schools, the stations on the Ogoe, L'Embarénée, Kangwe, and the Talaguga were handed over to the Mission Evangelique of Paris, and have been carried on by its representatives with great devotion and energy. I am unsympathetic in some particulars for reasons of my own with Christian missions, so my admiration for this one does not arise from the usual ground of admiration for missions, namely that however they may be carried on, they are engaged in a great and holy work, but I regard the Mission Evangelique, as judging from the results I have seen, as the perfection of what one may call a purely spiritual Mission. L'Embarénée is strictly speaking a district which includes Adanlinan, Ilanga, and the island, but the name is locally used to denote the great island in the Ogoe, whose native name is Nendi, Isangi, but for the sake of the general reader I will keep to the everyday term of L'Embarénée Island. L'Embarénée Island is the largest of the islands on the Ogoe. It is some 15 miles long, east and west, and a mile to a mile and a half wide. It is hilly and rocky, uniformly clad with forest, and several little permanent streams run from it on both sides into the Ogoe. It is situated 130 miles from the sea, at the point just below the entrance of the Anguni, where the Ogoe commences to divide up into that network of channels by which, like all great West African rivers save the Congo, it chooses to enter the ocean. The island, as we mainlanders at Kangua used to call it, was a great haunt of mine, particularly after I came down from Talaguga and saw fit to regard myself as competent to control a canoe. From Andande, the beach of Kangua, the breadth of the arm of the Ogoe to the nearest village on the island was about that of the thames at a black wall. One half of the way was slack water, the other half was broadside on to a stiff current. Now my pad canoe, at Andande, was about six feet long, pointed at both ends, flat-bottomed, so that it floated on the top of the water. Its freeboard was, when nothing was in it, some three inches, and the poor thing had seen trouble in its time, for it had a hole you could put your hand in at one end, so in order to navigate it successfully, you had to squat in the other, which immersed that to the water level but safely elevated the damaged end in the air. Of course you had to stop in your end firmly because, if you went forward, the hole went down into the water, and the water went into the hole, and forthwith you floundered with all hands, i.e. you and the paddle and the Kalabash baler. This craft also had a strong weather helm, owing to a warp in the tree of which it had been made. I learned all these things when afternoon paddling around the sand bank, and the next afternoon feeling confident in the merits of my vessel, I started for the island and I actually got there, and associated with the natives, but feeling my arms were permanently worn out by paddling against the current, I availed myself of the offer of a gentleman to paddle me back in his canoe. He introduced himself a Samuel, and volunteered the statement that he was a very good man. We duly settled ourselves in the canoe, he occupying the bow, I sitting in the middle and a Mrs. Samuel sitting in the stern. Mrs. Samuel was a powerful, pretty lady, and a conscientious and continuous paddler. Mr. S. was none of these things but an ex-Bible reader with an amazing knowledge of English which he spoke in a quaint falsetto faraway sort of voice, and that man's besetting sin was curiosity. You be Christian, ma'am, said he. I asked him if he had ever met a white man who was not. Yes, ma'am, says Samuel. I said, you must have been associating with people whom you ought not to know. Samuel, fortunately not having a repartee for this, paddled with his long paddle for a few seconds. Where be your husband, ma'am? Was the next conversational bomb he hurled at me? I know God one, I answer. No, God, says Samuel, paralyzed with astonishment, and as Mrs. S., who did not know English, gave one of her vigorous drives with her paddle at this moment, Samuel as near as possible got jerked head first into the ago way, and we took on board about two bucket fulls of water. He recovered himself, however, and returned to his charge. No God one, ma'am. No, say I furiously. Do you get much rub around here? I know betrayed man, says Samuel, refusing to fall into my trap for changing conversation. Why you no God one? The remainder of the conversation is unreportable, but he landed me at Adande, all right, and got his dollar. The next voyage I made, which was on the next day I decided to go by myself to the factory, which is on the other side of the island, and did so. I got some goods to buy fish with, and heard from Mr. Cockshut that the poor boy agent at Oswa Mokita had committed suicide. It was a grievous thing. He was, as I have said, a bright intelligent young Frenchman, but living in the isolation surrounded by savage, tiresome tribes, the strain of his responsibility had been too much for him. He had had a good deal of fever, and the very kindly head agent for Wormans had sent Dr. Pelesier to see if he had not better be invalid at home. But he told the doctor he was much better, and as he had no one at home to go to he begged him not to send him, and the doctor to his subsequent regret gave in. No one knows, who has not been to West Africa, how terrible is the life of a white man in one of these out-of-the-way factories with no white society and with nothing to look at day out and day in but the one set of objects, the forest, the river, and the beach, which in a place like Oswa Mokita you cannot leave for months at a time, and of which you soon know every plank and stone. I felt utterly wretched as I started home again to come up to the end of the island and go round it and down to Andande, and paddled on for some dull time, before I noticed that I was making absolutely no progress. I redoubled my exertions and crept slowly up to some rocks projecting above the water, but past them I could not as the main current of the Ogoi flew in hollow swirls round them against my canoe. Several passing canoe-falls of natives gave me good advice in Igalwa, but facts were facts and the Ogoi was too strong for me. After about twenty minutes an old fan gentleman came down river in a canoe and gave me good advice in fan and I got him to take me in tow. That is to say he got into my canoe and I held on to his and we went back down river. I then saw his intention was to take me across to that disreputable village, half fan, half pakele, which is situated on the main bank of the river opposite the island. This I disapproved of because I had heard that some Senegal soldiers who had gone over there had been stripped of every rag they had on and maltreated besides. It was growing very late and I wanted to get home to dinner. I communicated my feelings to my pilot who did not seem to understand at first so I feared I should have to knock them into him with a paddle, but at last he understood I wanted to be landed on the island and duly landed me when he seemed much surprised at the reward I gave him in pocket handkerchiefs. Then I got a powerful young Igalwa dandy to paddle me home. I did not go to the island next day but down below Fula, watching the fish playing in the clear water and the lizards and the birds on the Rocky High banks, but on my next journey round to the factories I got into another and worse disaster. I went off there early one morning and thinking the only trouble in getting back up the Ogoi and having developed a theory that this might be minimized by keeping very close to the island bank I never gave a thought to dangers attributed to going down river. So having by now acquired pace my canoe shot out beyond the end rocks of the island into the mainstream. It took me a second to realize what had happened and another to find out I could not get the canoe out of the current without upsetting it and that I could not force her back up the current so there was nothing for it but to keep her head straight now she had bolted. A group of native ladies who had followed my proceedings with much interest shouted observations which I believe to have been come back come back you'll be drowned. Goodbye Susanna don't you weep for me. I cordiously retorted and flew past them and the factory beaches and things in general keenly watching for my chance to run my canoe up a siding as it were off the current mainline. I got it at last a projecting spit of land from the island with the rocks projecting out of the water in front of it bothered the current and after a wild turn round or so and a near call from my terrified canoe trying to climb up a rock I got into slack water and took a pause in life's pleasures for a few minutes. Knowing I must be near the end of the island I went on pretty close to the bank finally got round into the Kangui branch of by a connecting creek and after an hour steady paddling I fell in with three big canoes going up river. They took me home as far as Fula whence a short paddle landed me at Andande only slightly late for supper convinced that it was almost as safe and far more amusing to be born lucky than wise. Now I have described my circumnavigation of the island I will proceed to describe its inhabitants. The up river end of Lembareni Island is the most inhabited. A path round the upper part of the island passes through a succession of Igallua villages and by the Roman Catholic missionary station. The slave villages belonging to these Igalluas are away down the north face of the island opposite the fan town of Fula which I have mentioned. It strikes me as remarkable that the Igallua like the Duala of Cameroons have their slaves in separate villages but this is the case though I do not know the reason of it. These Igallua slaves cultivate the plantations and bring up the vegetables and fruit to their owners villages and do the housework daily. The interior of the island is composed of high rocky, heavily forested hills with here and there a stream and here and there a swamp. The higher land is towards the up river end. Down river there is a lower strip of land with hillocks. This is I fancy formed by deposits of sand, etc., catching in among the rocks and connecting what were at one time several isolated islands. There are no big game or guerrillas on the island but it has a peculiar and awful house end, much smaller than the driver end but with a venomous bad bite. Its only good point is that its chief food is the white ants which are therefore kept in abeyance on Lembarani island although flourishing destructively on the mainland banks of the river in this locality. I was never tired of going and watching those Igalua villagers nor were I think the Igalua villagers ever tired of observing me. Although the physical conditions of life were practically identical with those of the mainland, the way in which the Igalua's dealt with them, i.e the culture, was distinct from the culture of the mainland fans. The Igalua's are a tribe very nearly akin if not ethnically identical with the Impongui and the culture of these two tribes is on a level with the highest native African culture. African culture, I may remark, varies just the same as European in this, that there is as much difference in the manners of life between Se and Igalua and Ibubi of Fernando Po as there is between a Londoner and a landlander. The Igalua builds his house like that of the Impongui of Bamboo and he surrounds himself with European made articles. The neat houses fitted with windows, with wooden shutters to close at night and with a deal door, a carpenter made door are in sharp contrast with the ragged ant hill looking performances of the acas or the bark huts of the fan with no windows and just an extra broad bit of bark to slip across the hole that serves as a door. On going into an Igalua house you will see a four-legged table often covered with a bright-colored tablecloth on which stands a water bottle with two clean glasses and round about you will see chairs, Windsor chairs. These houses have usually three sometimes more rooms and a separate closed-in little kitchen built apart wherein you may observe European made saucepans in addition to the ubiquitous skillet. Outside all along the clean sandy streets the inhabitants are seated. The Igalua is truly great at sitting, the men pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity, broken occasionally by leisurely netting a fishing net, the end of the netting hitched up onto the roof thatch and not held by a stirrup. The ladies are employed in the manufacture of articles pertaining to a higher culture. I allude as Mr. Mikauber would say to bedquilts and pillowcases, the most gorgeous bedquilts and pillowcases made of patchwork, and now and again you will see a mosquito-bar in course of construction, of course not made of net or muslin because of the awesome strength and ferocity of the lembarani strain of mosquitoes, but stout, fair-flowered and bespring chintzes and you will observe these things are often being sown with a sewing machine. The women who may not be busy sewing are busy doing each other's hair. Hair dressing is quite an art among the Igalua and Imponwe women, and their hair is very beautiful, very crinkly but fine. It is plated up close to the head, partings between the plates making elaborate partares. Into the beds of plated hair are stuck long pins of river ivory, hippo, decorated with black tracery and openwork and made by their good men. A lady will stick as many of these into her hair as she can get, but the prevailing mode is to have one stuck in behind each ear, showing their broad long heads above like two horns. They are exceedingly becoming to these black but calmly ladies. Verily, I think, the calmest ladies I have ever seen on the coast. Very black they are, blacker than many of their neighbors, always blacker than the fans, and although their skin lacks that velvety pile of the true negro, it is not too shiny, but it is fine and usually unblemished, and their figures are charmingly rounded, their hands and feet small, almost as small as a high-class calabar woman's, and their eyes large, lustrous, soft and brown, and their teeth as wide as the sea-surf and undisfigured by filing. The native dress for men and women alike is the cloth or pound. The men wear it by rolling the upper line around the waist, and in addition they frequently wear a singlet or a flannel shirt worn more africano, flowing free. Rich men will mount a European coat and hat, and men connected with the mission or trading stations occasionally wear trousers. The personal appearance of the men does not amount too much when all is done, so we will return to the ladies. They wrap the upper hem of these cloths round under their armpits, a graceful form of drapery, but one which requires a continual readjustment. The cloth is about four yards long and too deep, and there is always round the hem a border, or false hem of turkey-red twill, or some other colored cotton cloth to the main body of the pound. In addition to the cloth there is worn, when possible, a European shawl, either one of those thick cotton cloth ones printed with Chinese-looking patterns in dull red on a dark background. This sort is wrapped round the upper part of the body, or what is more highly esteemed is a bright, light-colored fancy wool shawl, pink or pale blue preferred, which being carefully folded into a roll is placed over one shoulder and is entirely for dandy. I am thankful to say they do not go in for hats when they wear anything on their heads. It is a handkerchief folded shawl-wise. The base of the triangle is bound round the forehead just above the eyebrows. The ends carried over the ears and tied behind over the apex of the triangle of the handkerchief, the three ends being then arranged fan-wise at the back. Add to this costume a sombre colored silk parasol, not one of your green or red young tent-like, brutally masculine, knobby-sticked umbrellas, but a fair lady-like parasol, which being carefully rolled up, is carried handle foremost right in the middle of the head, also for dandy. Then a few strings of turquoise blue beads or imitation gold ones worn around the shapely throat, and I will back my Igalwa or Impongwe bell against any of those South Sea Island young ladies we nowadays hear so much about, thanks to Mr. Stevenson. Yay, even though these may be wreathed with fragrant flowers and the African lady very rarely goes in for flowers. The only time I have seen the African ladies wearing them for ornament has been among these Igalwas, who now and again stud their night black hair with pretty little round vividly red blossoms, in a most fetching way. I wonder the Africans do not wear flowers more frequently, for they are devoted to scent, both men and women. The Igalwas are a proud race, one of the noble tribes like the Impongwe and the Ajumba. The women do not intermarry with lower-class tribes, and in their own tribe they are much restricted, owing to all relations on the mother's side being forbidden to intermarry. This well-known form of accounting relationships only through the mother, Mutirekt, is in a more perfected and elaborated form among the Igalwa than among any other tribe I am personally acquainted with, brothers and cousins on the mother's side being in one class of relationship. The father's responsibility as regards authority over his own children is very slight. The really responsible male relative is the mother's elder brother. From him must leave to marry be obtained for either girl or boy. To him and the mother must the present be taken which is exacted on the marriage of a girl, and should the mother die, on him and not on the father lies the responsibility of rearing the children, they go to his house and he treats and regards them as nearer and dearer to himself than his own children, and at his death, after his own brothers by the same mother, they become his heirs. Marriage among the Igalwa and Impongue is not direct marriage by purchase, but a certain fixed prize present is made to the mother and uncle of the girl. Other propitiatory presents Queliki are made but do not count legally, and have not necessarily to be returned in case of post-nuptial differences arising leading to a divorce, a very frequent catastrophe in the social circle. For the Igalwa ladies are spirited and devoted to personal adornment and they are naggers at their husbands. Many times when walking on Lemparene Island have I seen a lady stand in the street and let her husband, who had taken shelter inside the house, know what she thought of him in a way that reminded me of some London slum scenes. When the husband loses his temper, as he surely does sooner or later, being a man, he waxes his wife or wives if they have been at him in a body. He may whack with impunity so long as he does not draw blood. If he does, be it never so little, his wife is off to her relations. The present he has given for her is returned, the marriage is annulled, and she can remarry as soon as she is able. Her relations are only too glad to get her because, although the present has to be returned, yet the propitiatory offerings remain theirs, and they no more propitiatory offerings as well as any other present will accrue with the next set of suitors. This, of course, is only the case with the younger women. The older women, for one thing, do not nag so much, and moreover they have usually children willing and able to support them. If they have not, their state is, like that of all old, childless women in Africa, a very desolate one. Infant marriage is now in vogue among the Galois, and to my surprise I find it is a quite recent introduction and adoption. Their own account of this retrograde movement in culture is that in the last generation some of the old people indeed, claimed to have known him, there was an exceedingly ugly and deformed man who could not get a wife, the woman being then as the men are now great admirers of physical beauty. So this man, being very cunning, hid on the idea of becoming betrothed to one before she could exercise her own choice in the matter, and knowing a family in which an interesting event was likely to occur, he made heavy presents in the proper quarters and bespoke a coming infant if it should be a girl. A girl it was and thus said the Galois arose a custom in nowadays only they do not engage their wives so early, as did the founder of the custom, they adopt infant marriage as an institution. I inquired carefully in the interests of ethnology as to what methods of courting were in vogue previously. They said people married each other because they loved each other. I hope other ethnologists will follow this inquiry up for we may here find a real golden age, which in other races of humanity lies away in the mists of the ages behind the kitchen middens and the Cambrian rocks. My own opinion in this matter is that the earlier courting methods of the Galois involved a certain amount of effort on the man's part, a thing abhorrent to an Galois. It necessitated his dressing himself up and likely enough fighting that impudent scoundrel who was engaged in courting her too, and above all serenading her at night on the native harp with its strings made from the tendrils of a certain orchid or on the Marimba amongst crowds of mosquitoes. Any institution that involved being out at night amongst crowds of those Lembarenne mosquitoes would have to disappear, let that institution be what it might. The Igalois are one of the dying out coast tribes. As well as on Lembarenne Island their villages are scattered along the banks of the lower Ogoe and on the shores and islands of the Iliva Zeolanghi. On the island they are, so far undisturbed by the fan invasion and lays their lives away like lotus-eaters. Their slaves work their large plantations and bring up to them magnificent yams, ready-prepared oguma, sweet potatoes, papa, etc., not forgetting that delicacy odiac cheese, this is not an exclusive inspiration of theirs for the impongwen that Benga use it as well. It is made from the kernel of the wild mango, a singularly beautiful tree of great size and stately spread of foliage. I can compare it only in appearance and habit of growth to our Irish or evergreen oak, but it is an idealization of that fine tree. Its leaves are a softer, brighter, deeper green, and induce season. August it is covered, not ostentatiously like the real mango, with great spikes of bloom, looking each like a gigantic head of minyonet. But with small yellow green flowers tucked away under the leaves, filling the air with a soft sweet perfume and then falling onto the bare shaded ground beneath to make a deep pile the carpet. I do not know whether it is a mango tree at all, for I am no botanist, but anyhow the fruit is rather like that of the mango in external appearance, and in internal still more so, for it has a disproportionately large stone. These stones are cracked and the kernel taken out. The kernels are spread a short time in the shade to dry, then they are beaten up into a pulp with a wooden pestle and the pulp put into a basket lined carefully with plantain leaves and placed in the sun, which melts it up into a stiff mass. The basket is then removed from the sun and stood aside to cool. When cool the cheese can be turned out in shape and can be kept a long time if it is wrapped around with leaves and a cloth and hung up inside the house. Its appearance is that of almond rock and it is cut easily with a knife, but at any period of its existence if it is left in the sun it melts again rapidly into an oily mass. The natives use it as a seasoning in their cookery, stuffing fish and plantains with it and so on, using it also in the preparation of a sort of sea pie they make with meat and fish. To make this a thing well worth doing, particularly with hippo or other coarse meat, reduce the wood fire to embers and make plantain leaves into a sort of bag or cup. Small pieces of the meat should then be packed in layers with red pepper and odiac in between. The tops of the leaves are then tied together with fine tai-tai and the bundle without any sauce pan of any kind stood on the glowing embers, the cook taking care there is no flame. The meat is done and a superb gravy formed before the containing plantain leaves are burnt through. Plantain leaves will stand an amazing lot in the way of fire. This dish is really excellent even when made with python hippo or crocodile. It makes the former most palatable, but of course it does not remove the musky taste from crocodile, nothing I know of will. The great and important differences between the Impongwe, Igalua and Ajumbe fetish, and the fetish of those tribes round them, consists in their conception of a certain spirit called omburi. They have as is constant among the Bantu races of southwest Africa, a great god, the creator, a god who has made all things and who now no longer takes any interest in the things he has created. Their name for this god is Ajumbe, which when pronounced sounds to my ears like Anlinle, the L's being very weak. The derivation of this name however is from Anima, a spirit, and Umbia, good. This god, unlike other forms of the creating god in fetish, has a viceroy or minister who is a god he has created and to whom he leaves the government of affairs. This god is omburi, or omburi, and this omburi is of very high interest to the student of comparative fetish. He has never been nor can he ever become a man, i.e. be born as a man but he can transfuse with his own personality that of human beings and also the souls of all those things we white men regard as inanimate, such as rocks, trees, etc. in a similar manner. The impongwe know that his residence is in the sea and some of them have seen him as an old white man, not flesh color white but chalk white. There is another important point here but it wants a volume to itself so I must pass it. Omburi's appearance in a corporeal form denotes ill luck, not death to the seer but misfortune of a severe and diffused character. The ruin of a trading enterprise, the destruction of a village or a family, are put down to Omburi's action yet he is not regarded as a malevolent god, a devil, but as an avenger or punisher of sin and the impongwe look on him as the being to whom they primarily owe the good things and fortunes of this life and as the being who alone has power to govern the host of truly malevolent spirits that exist in nature. The different instruments with which he works in the shaping of human destiny bear his name when in his employ, when acting by means of water he is Omburi aningo, when in the weather Omburi ingali, when in the forests Omburi imbaka, when in the form of a dwarf Omburi aqua, and so on. The great difference between Omburi and the lesser spirits is this. The lesser spirits cannot incarnate themselves except through extraneous things. Omburi can, he can become visible without anything beyond his own will to do so. The other spirits must be in something to become visible. This is an extremely delicate piece of fetish which it took me weeks to work out. I think I may say another thing about Omburi, though I say it carefully, and that is that among the impongwe and the tribe who are the parent tribe of the impongwe, the now rapidly dying out of Jumba and their allied tribe de Galois, Omburi is a distinct entity, while among the neighboring tribes he is a class, i.e. there are hundreds of Omburi or Ibwiti, one for every remarkable place or thing, such as rock, tree or forest, thicket, and for every dangerous place in a river. Had I not observed a similar state of affairs regarding Sasa Bonsum, a totally different kind of spirit on the windward coast, I should have had even greater trouble than I had in finding a key to what seemed at first a mass of conflicting details regarding this important spirit, Omburi. There is one other very important point in impongwe fetish, and that is that the souls of men exist before birth as well as after death. This is indeed as far as I have been able to find out a doctrine universally held by the West African tribes, but among the impongwe there is this modification in it, which agrees strangely well with the idea I have found regarding reincarnated diseases existent among the Ocyon tribes, pure Negroes. The malevolent minor spirits are capable of being born with what we will call a man's soul as well as going in with a man's soul during sleep. For example, an olaga may be born with a man and that man will thereby be born mad. He may at any period of his life, given certain conditions, become possessed by an evil spirit, on logo abambo, injembe, incandada, and become mad or ill, but if he is born mad or sickly, one of the evil spirits, such as an olaga or an obambo, the soul of a man that has not been buried properly, has been born with him. The rest of the impongwe fetish is on broad lines common to other tribes, so I relegate it to the general collection of notes on fetish. Impongwe jurisprudence is founded on the same ideas as those on which West African jurisprudence at large is founded, but it is so elaborated that it would be a desecration to sketch it, it requires a massive monograph. End of Part 2 Chapter 6 Lembarenne Recorded by Kehinde of Bahatrek.com Part 1 of Chapter 7 On the Way from Kangwe to Lake Inkovi In which the Voyager goes for bush again, and wanders into a new lake and a new river. July 22, 1895 Left Kangwe The four Ajuba did not turn up early in the morning as had been arranged, but arrived about eight in pouring rain, so we decided to wait until two o'clock, which will give us time to reach their town of Arevuma before nightfall, and may perhaps give us a chance of arriving there dry. At two we start. We go down river on the Kangwe side of Lembarenne Island, make a pause in front of the Igalwa slave town, which is on the island and nearly opposite the fan-town of Fula on the mainland bank, our motive being to get stores of yam and plantain, and magnificent specimens of both we get, and then, when our Kangwe is laden with them, to an extent that would get us into trouble under the act if it ran here, off we go again. Every canoe we meet shouts us a greeting and asks where we are going, and we say Rembue, and they say what, Rembue, and we say yes, Rembue, and paddle on. I lay among the luggage for about an hour, not taking much interest in the Rembue or anything else, save my own headache. But this soon lifted, and I was able to take notice, just before we reached the Ajumbah's town called Arevuma. The sand banks stretch across the river here, nearly awash, so all our cargo of yams has to be thrown overboard onto the sand, from which they can be collected by being weighted out too. The canoe, thus lightened, is able to go on a little further, but we are soon hard and fast again, and the crew have to jump out and shove her off about once every five minutes, and then to look lively about, jumping back into her again, as she shoots over the cliffs of the sand banks. When we reach Arevuma, I find it is a very prettily situated town on the left-hand bank of the river, clean and well-kept, and composed of houses built on the Igalwa and Impongwei plan, with walls of split bamboo and a palm-fatch roof. I own, I did not much care for these Ajumbahs on starting, but they are evidently going to be kind and pleasant companions. One of them is a gentlemanly-looking man who wears a gray shirt, another looks like a genial Irishman who has accidentally got black, very black. He is distinguished by wearing a singlet, another is a thin elderly man, notably silent, and the remaining one is a strapping big fella, as black as a wolf's mouth, of gigantic muscular development, and wearing quantities of fitish charms hung about him. The two first mentioned are Christians, the other two Pagans, and I will refer to them by their characteristic points, for their honorable names are awfully alike when you do hear them, and, as is usual with Africans, rarely used in conversation. Gray shirt places his house at my disposal, and both he and his exceedingly pretty wife do their utmost to make me comfortable. The house lies at the west end of the town. It is one room inside, but has, I believe, a separate cooking shed. In the veranda in front is placed a table, an ivory-bundled chair, and a gourd of water, and I am also treated to a calico tablecloth, and most thoughtfully screened off from the public gaze with more calico so that I can have my tea in privacy. After this meal, to my surprise, Ndaka turns up. Certainly, he is one of the very ugliest men, black or white, I have ever seen, and I fancy, one of the best. He is now on a holiday from Kangwe, seeing to the settlement of his dead brother's affairs. The dead brother was a great man in Arevuma, and a pagan. But Ndaka, the Christian Bible reader, seems to get on perfectly with a family, and is holding tonight a meeting outside his brother's house, and comes with a lantern to fetch me to attend it. Of course, I have to go, headache or no headache. Most of the town was there, mainly spectators. Ndaka and my two Christian boatmen managed the service between them, and what with the hymns and the mosquitoes, the experience is slightly awful. We sit in a line in front of the house, which is brilliantly lit up, our own lantern on the ground before us, acting as a rival entertainment to the house lamps inside, for some of the best insect society in Africa, who, after the manner of the insect world, insist on regarding us as responsible for their own idiocy in getting singed, and sting us in revenge while we slap hard as we howl hymns in the fearful Igalwa and Imbongwe way. Next to an English picnic the most uncomfortable thing I know is an open-air service in this part of Africa. Service being over, Ndaka takes me over the house to show its splendors. The great brilliancy of its illumination arises from its being lit up by two hanging lamps burning paraffin oil. The most remarkable point about the house is the floor, which is made of split-plated bamboo. It gives under your feet, in an alarming way, being raised some three or four feet above the ground, and I am haunted by the fear that I shall go through it and give pain to myself and great trouble to others before I could be got out. It is a beautiful piece of workmanship, and Arevuma has every reason to be proud of it. Having admired these things I go, dead tired and still headachey, down the road with my host, who carries the lantern, through an atmosphere that has forty-five percent of solid matter in the shape of mosquitoes, then wishing him good night, I shut myself in and illuminate humbly with a candle. The furniture of the house consists mainly of boxes containing the wealth of gray shirt, in clothes, mirrors, etc. One corner of the room is taken up by great calabashes full of some sort of liquor, and there is an ivory bundle chair, a hanging mirror, several rusty guns, and a considerable collection of china basins and jugs. Evidently gray shirt is rich. The most interesting article to me, however, just now is the bed hung over with a clean substantial chintz mosquito bar and spread with clean calico and adorned with patchwork covered pillows. So I take off my boots and put on my slippers, for it never does in this country to leave off boots altogether at any time and risk getting bitten by mosquitoes on the feet when you are on the march, because the rub of your boot on the bite always produces a sore, and a sore, when it comes in the guerrilla country, comes to stay. No sooner have I carefully swished all the mosquitoes from under the bar and turned in, than a cat scratches and meows at the door, turn out and let her in. She is evidently a pet, so I take her on to the bed with me. She is a very nice cat, sandy and fat, and if I held at the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild foul, I should have no hesitation in saying, she had in her the soul of Dame Juliana Burners, such a whole sold devotion to sport does she display, dashing out through the flaps of the mosquito bar after rats, which amid squeals from the rats and curses from her, she kills amongst the china collection. Then she comes to me triumphant expecting congratulations and accompanied by mosquitoes, and purrs and knees upon my chest until she hears another rat. Tuesday, July 23. I am aroused by violent knocking at the door in the early grey dawn, so violent that two large centipedes and a scorpion drop onto the bed. They have evidently been tucked away among the folds of the bar all night. Well, when ignorance is blissed, his folly to be wise, particularly along here, I get up without delay and find myself quite well. The cat has thrown a basin of water neatly over into my bag during her nocturnal hunts, and when my tea comes, I am informed, a man done die, in the night, which explains the firing of guns I heard. I inquire what he has died of, and I am told he just struck luck and then he die. His widows are having their faces painted white by sympathetic lady friends, and are tired in their oldest, dirtiest clothes, and, but very few of them, still they seem to be taking things in a resigned spirit. These ajumba seem pleasant folk. They play with their pretty brown children in a taking way. Last night I noticed some men and women playing a game new to me, which consisted in throwing a hoop at each other. The point was to get the hoop to fall over your adversary's head. It is a cheerful game. Quantities of the common house fly about, and during the early part of the morning it rains in a gentle kind of way, but soon after we are afloat in our canoe it turns into a soft white mist. We paddle still westwards down the broad quiet waters of the Orembovongo. I notice great quantities of birds about here, great hornbills, vividly colored kingfishers, and for the first time the great vulture I have often heard of, and the skin of which I will take home before I mention even its proximate spread of wing. There are also noble white cranes and flocks of small black and white birds, new to me, with heavy razor-shaped bills reminding one of the Devonian puffin. The hornbill is perhaps the most striking in appearance. It is the size of a small or say a good-sized hen turkey. Gray shirt says the flocks, which are of eight or ten, always have the same quantity of cocks and hens, and that they live together white man fashion, i.e. each couple keeping together. They certainly do a great deal of courting, the cock filling out his waddles on his neck like a turkey, and spreading out his tail with great pomp and ceremony, but very awkwardly. To see hornbills on a bare sand bank is a solemn sight, but when they are dodging about in the hippograss they sink ceremony and roll and waddle, looking, my man said, for snakes and the little sandfish which are close in under the bank, and their killing way of dropping their jaws. I should say, opening their bills when they are alarmed is comic. I think this has something to do with their hearing, for I often saw two or three of them in a line, on a long branch, standing, stretched up to their full height, their great eyes opened wide, and all with their great beaks open, evidently listening for something. Their cry is most peculiar and can only be mistaken for a native horn, and although there seems little variety in it to my ear, there must be more to theirs, for they will carry on long confabulations with each other across a river, and I believe sit up half the night and talk scandal. There were plenty of plantain eaters here, but although their screech was as appalling as I have heard in Angola, they were not regarded, by the Ajumba, at any rate, as being birds of evil omen, as they are in Angola. Still by no means all the birds here only screech and squark. Several of them have very lovely notes. There is one who always gives a series of infinitely beautiful, soft, rich-toned whistles just before the light of the dawn shows in the sky, and one at least who has a prolonged and very lovely song. This bird, I was told in Gabun, is called Telefonis erythropteris. I expect an ornithologist would enjoy himself here, but I cannot, and will not, collect birds. I hate to have them killed anyhow, and particularly in the barbarous way in which these natives kill them. The broad stretch of water looks like a long lake. In all directions, sand-banks are showing their broad yellow backs, and there will be more showing soon, for it is not yet the height of the dry. We are perpetually grounding on those which by next month will be above water. These canoes are built, I believe, more with a view to taking sand-banks comfortably than anything else, but they are by no means yet sufficiently specialized for getting off them. Their flat bottoms enable them to glide on to the banks and sit there, without either upsetting or cutting into the sand, as a canoe with a keel wood. But the trouble comes in when you are getting off the steep edge of the bank, and the usual form it takes is upsetting. So far my Ajumba friends have only tried to meet this difficulty by tying the cargo in. I try to get up the geography of this region conscientiously. Fortunately, I find gray shirt, singlet, and topagin, can speak trade English. None of them, however, seem to recognize a single blessed name on the chart, which is saying nothing against the chart and its makers, who probably got their names up from impongues and Igaloas instead of Ajumba, as I am trying to. Geographical research in this region is fraught with difficulty. I find owing to different tribes calling one in the same place by different names, and I am sure the Royal Geographical Society ought to insert among their hints that every traveller in this region should carefully learn every separate native word, or set of words signifying I don't know. Four villages and two rivers I have come across out here solemnly sat down with various forms of this statement for their native name. Really, I think the old Portuguese way of naming places after saints, etc., was wiser in the long run, and it was certainly pleasanter to the ear. My Ajumba, however, know about Maetangambi and the Venual Rite, and Oliviazi Asingo, so I must try and get cross-bearings from these. We have, in addition to our crew, this morning a man who wants to go and get work at John Holt's sub-factory away on the Remboe. He has been waiting a long while at Arevuma unable to get across. I am told because the road is now stopped between Ajingo and the Remboe by those fearful fans. How are we going to get through that way, says I with natural feminine alarm. We are not, sa, says Grayshirt. This is what Lady MacDonald would term a chatty little incident, and my hair begins to rise, as I remember what I have been told about those fans, and the indications I have already seen of its being true when on the upper Ogoe. Now here we are going to try to get through the heart of their country, far from a French station and without the French flag. Why did I not obey Mr. Hudson's orders not to go wandering about in a reckless way? Anyhow I am in for it, and fortune favors the brave. The only question is, do I individually come under this class? I go into details. It seems Pagan thinks he can depend on the friendship of two fans he once met and did business with, and who now live on an island in Lake Incovy. Incovy is not down on my map, and I have never heard of it before. Anyhow, thither we are bound now. Each man has brought with him his best gun loaded to the muzzle and tied on to the baggage against which I am leaning, the muzzle sticking out each side of my head, the flintlocks covered with cases or sheaths made of the black haired skins of gorillas, leopard skin and a beautiful bright base skin, which I do not know which they say is bush cow, but they call half a dozen things bush cow. These guns are not the gas pipes I have seen up north, but decent rifles which have had the rifling filed out and the locks replaced by flintlocks and converted into muzzle loaders, and many of them have beautiful barrels. I find that the ajumba name for the beautiful shrub that has long bunches of red, yellow and cream-coloured young leaves at the end of its branches is Oba'a. I also learned that in their language ebony and a monkey have one name. The forest on either bank is very lovely. Some enormously high columns of green are formed by a sort of climbing plant having taken possession of lightning-struck trees, and in one place it really looks exactly as if someone had spread a great green coverlet over the forest so as to keep it dry. No high land showing in any direction. Pagan tells me the extinguisher-shaped juju filled with medicine and made of iron is against drowning. The red juju is, for, keep foot in path. Beautiful effect of a gleam of sunshine lighting up a red sandbank till it glows like the embellundan gold. Indeed, the effects are Ternoresque, today owing to the mist, and the sun playing in and out among it. The sandbanks now have their cliffs to the north-northwest and northwest. At 9.30 the broad river in front of us is apparently closed by sandbanks which run out from the banks thus. Yellow, south bank bright red, north bank yellow. Current running strong along south bank. This bank bears testimony of this also being the case in the wet season, for a fringe of torn-down trees hangs from it into the river. Passeque, a town on north bank interchanging the usual observations regardless of the north bank interchanging the usual observations regarding our destination. The river seems absolutely barred with sand again, but as we paddle down it the obstructions resolve themselves into spits of sand from the north bank and the largest island in midstream which also has a long tail or train of sandbank down river. Here we meet a picturesque series of canoes, fruit and trade laden, being polled upstream, one man with his pole over one side, the other with his pole over the other, making a St. Andrew's Cross as you meet them end on. Most luxurious, charming, and pleasant trip this. The men are standing up swinging in rhythmic motion their long rich red wood paddles in perfect time to their elaborate melancholy minor key boat song. Nearly lost with all hands. Sandbank palliver, only when we were going over the end of it the canoe slipped sideways over its edge. River deep, bottom sand and mud. This information may be interesting to the geologist, but I hope I shall not be converted by circumstances into a human-sounding apparatus again today. Next time she strikes I shall get out and shove behind. We are now skirting the real north bank and not the bank of an island or islands as we have been for some time heretofore. Lovely stream falls into this river over cascades. The water is now rough in a small way and the width of the river great, but it soon is crowded again with wooded islands. There are patches and wreaths of a lovely vermilion flowering bush-rope decorating the forest, and now and again clumps of a plant that shows a yellow and crimson spike of bloom, very strikingly beautiful. We pass a long tunnel in the bush, quite dark as you look down it, evidently the path to some native town. The south bank is covered, where the falling waters have exposed it with hippo grass. Terrible lot of mangrove flies about, although we are more than one hundred miles above the mangrove belt. River broad again, tending west-southwest, with a broad flattened island with attributive sand banks in the middle. The fair ways along the south bank of the river. Grey shirt tells me this river is called the Orembovongo, or small river, so as to distinguish it from the main stream of the Ogoe, which goes down past the south side of Lembarenne Island, as well I know after that canoe affair of mine. Izingo now bears due north and native mahogany is called Okuma. Pass a village called Welly, on north bank. It looks like some gypsy caravan stuck on poles. I expect that village has known what it means to be swamped by the rising river. It looks as if it had, very hastily, in the middle of some night, taken to stilts, which I am sure, from their present rickety condition will not last through the next wet season, and then some unfortunate spirit will get the blame of the collapse. I also learn that it is the natal spot of my friend Kabinda, the carpenter at Andandi. Now, if some of these good people I know would only go and distinguish themselves, I might write a sort of county-family history of these parts. But they don't, and I fancy won't. For example, the entrance, or should I say the exit, of a broadish little river is just away on the south bank. If you go up this river, it runs southeast. You get to a good-sized lake. In this lake there is an island called Andole. Then out of the other side of the lake there is another river, which falls into the ago way mainstream. But that is not the point of the story, which is that on that island of Adole. Ngota, the interpreter, first saw the light. Why he ever did, there, or anywhere, heaven only knows. I know I shall never want to write his biography. On the western bank end of that river going to Adole, there is an Igalwa town, notable for a large quantity of fine white ducks and a clump of Indian bamboo. My informants say no white men ever live for this place. So I suppose the ducks and bamboo have been imported by some black trader whose niddle spot this is. The name of this village is Wanderigwoma. Stuck on sand bank, I flew out and shoved behind, leaving Ngota to do the balancing performances in the stern. This orembo vongo divides up just below here, I am told, when we have re-embarked into three streams. One goes into the main ago way, opposite Aishuka in Inkama country. Inkama country commences at Aishuka and goes to the sea, one into the Ngumbi and one into the Ngonghi, all in the Orembo country. Izingo now lies northeast according to Grey Shirt's arm. On our river there is here another broad low island, with its gold colored banks shining out, seemingly barring the entire channel, but there is really a canoe channel along by both banks. We turn at this point into a river on the north bank that runs north and south. The current is running very swift to the north. We run down into it, and then it being more than time enough for chop, we push the canoe onto a sand bank in our new river, which I am told is the Karkola. I, after having had my tea, wander off and find behind our high sand bank, which like all the other sand banks above water now, is getting grown over with hippo grass, a fine light green grass, the beloved food of both hippo and manatee. A forest, and entering this I notice a succession of strange mounds or heaps, made up of branches, twigs and leaves and dead flowers. Many of these heaps are recent, while others have fallen into decay. Investigation shows they are burial places. Among the debris of an old one there are human bones, and out from one of the new ones comes a stench and a hurrying, exceedingly busy line of ants demonstrating what is going on. I own, I thought these mounds were some kind of birds or animals nest. They look entirely unhuman in this desolate ridge of forest. Leaving these I go down to the water edge of the sand and find in it a quantity of pools of varying breadth and expanse, but each surrounded by a rim of dark red-brown deposit which you can lift off the sand in a skin. On the top of the water is a film of exquisite iridescent colors like those in a soap bubble, only darker and brighter. In the river alongside the sand there are thousands of those beautiful little fish with a black line each side of their tails. They are perfectly tame and I feed them with crumbs in my hand. After making every effort to terrify the unknown object containing the food, gallant bulls, quite two inches long, siddling up and snapping at my fingers, they come and feed right in the palm so that I could have caught them by the handful had I wished. There are also a lot of those weird, semi-transparent yellow-spotted little sandfish with cup-shaped pectoral fins which I see they used to enable them to make their astoundingly long leaps. These fish are of a more nervous and distrustful disposition and hover around my hand but will not come into it. Indeed I do not believe the other cheeky little fellows would allow them to. The men having had their rest and their pipes shout for me and off we go again. The Carcola soon widens to about a hundred feet. It is evidently very deep here. The right bank, the east, is forested, the left low and shrubbed, one patch looking as if it were being cleared for a plantation but no village showing. A big rock shows up on the right bank which is a change from the clay and sand and soon the whole character of the landscape changes. We come to a sharp turn in the river from north and south to east and west, the current very swift. The river channel dodges round against a big bank of sword grass and then widens out to the breadth of the Thames at Putney. I am told that a river runs out of it here to the west, to Orungu country, and so I imagine this Carcola falls ultimately into the Nazareth. We skirt the eastern banks which are covered with low grass with a scanty lot of trees along the top. Highland shows in the distance to the south-southwest and southwest and then we suddenly turn up into a broad river or straight, shaping our course north northeast. On the opposite bank on a high dwarf cliff is a fan town. All fan now says singlet in anything but a gratified tone of voice. End of part one, chapter seven. On the way from Kangwe to Lake Inkovi, Part two of chapter seven. On the way from Kangwe to Lake Inkovi. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Travels in West Africa by Mary H. Kingsley. Part two of chapter seven. It is a strange, wild, lonely bit of the world we are now in, apparently a lake or broad, full of sand banks, some bare and some in the course of developing into permanent islands, by the growth on them of that floating coarse grass, any joint of which being torn off either by the current, a passing canoe or hippos floats down and grows wherever it settles. Like most things that float in these parts, it usually settles on a sand bank and then grows in much the same way as our couch grass grows on land in England, so as to form a network which catches for its adopted sand bank all sorts of floating debris, so the sand bank comes up in the world. The waters of the wet season when they rise drown off the grass, but when they fall up it comes again from the root, and so gradually the sand bank becomes an island and persuades real trees and shrubs to come and grow on it, and its future is then secured. We skirt alongside a great young island of this class, the sword grass, some ten or fifteen feet high. It has not got any trees on it yet, but by next season or so it doubtless will have. The grass is stable down into paths by hippos, and just as I have realized who are the road-makers they appear in person. One immense fellow, hearing us, stands up and shows himself about six feet from us in the grass, gazes calmly, and then yawns a yawn a yard wide and grunts his news to his companions, some of whom, there is evidently a large herd, get up and stroll towards us with all the flowing grace of pan-technicon vans in motion. We put our helm paddles hard, a starboard, and leave that bank. Our hasty trip across to the bank of the island on the other side being accomplished, we in search of seclusion and in the hope that out of sight would mean out of mind to hippos, shot down in narrow channel between semi-island sand banks, and those sand banks, if you please, are covered with specimens, as fine a set of specimens as you could wish for, of the West African crocodile. These interesting animals are also having their siestas, lying sprawling in all directions on the sand, with their mouths wide open. One immense old lady has a family of lively young crocodiles running over her, evidently playing like a lot of kittens. The heavy musky smell they give off is most repulsive, but we do not rise up and make a row about this, because we feel hopelessly in the wrong in intruding into these family scenes uninvited, and so apologetically pull ourselves along rapidly, not even singing. The pace the canoe goes down that channel would be a wander to Henley Regatta. When out of earshot I ask Pagan whether there are many gorillas, elephants, or bush cows around here. Plenty too much, says he, and it occurs to me that the corn fields are growing golden-green away in England, and soon there rises up in my mental vision a picture that fascinated my youth in the Flagendee Blatter, representing Friedrich Gerstacker off the rise. That gallant man is depicted ramping on a serpent, new to M. Bollinger, while he attempts to club to the butt end of his gun a most lively savage who, accompanied by a bison, is attacking him in front. A terrific and obviously enthusiastic crocodile is grabbing the tail of the explorer's coat, and the explorer says, I do not know where in the world Gerstacker was at the time, but I should fancy hear abouts. My vigorous and lively conscience also reminds me that the last words a most distinguished and valued scientific friend had said to me before I left home was, Always take measurements, Miss Kingsley, and always take them from the adult male. I know I have neglected opportunities of carrying this commission out on both those banks, but I do not feel like going back. Besides, the men would not like it, and I have mislaid my yard measure. The extent of water dotted with sand banks and islands in all directions here is great, and seems to be fringed uniformly by low swampy land, beyond which to the north rounded lumps of hills show blue. On one of the islands is a little white house which I am told was once occupied by a black trader for John Holt. It looks a desolate place for any men to live in, and the way the crocodiles and hippo must have come upon the garden ground in the evening time could not have enhanced its charms to the average cautious men. My men say, no man live for that place now. The factory, I believe, has been for some trade reason abandoned. Behind it is a great clump of dark colored trees. The rest of the island is now covered with hippo grass, looking like beautifully capped lawn. We lie up for a short rest at another island, also a weird spot in its way, for it is covered with a grove of only one kind of tree, which has a twisted, contorted gray-white trunk, and dull, lifeless-looking green hard foliage. I learned that these good people, to make topographical confusion worse, confound it, call a river by one name when you are going up it, and by another when you are coming down, just as if you called the Thames the London when you were going up, and the Greenwich when you were coming down. The banks all round this lake or broad seem all light-colored sand and clay. We pass out of it into a channel, current flowing north. As we are entering the channel between banks of grass overgrown sand, a superb white crane is seen standing on the sand edge to the left. Gray-shirt attempts to get a shot at it, but it, alarmed at our unusual appearance, raises itself up with one of those graceful preliminary curses, and after one or two preliminary flaps spreads its broad wings and sweeps away, with its long legs trailing behind like a thing on a Japanese screen. The river into which we ran zig-zags about, and then take a course south-southeast. It is studded with islands slightly higher than those we have passed, and thinly clad with forest. The place seems alive with birds, flocks of pelican, and crane rise up before us out of the grass, and every now and then a crocodile slides off the bank into the water. Wonderfully like old logs they look, particularly when you see one letting himself roll and float down on the current. In spite of these interests, I began to wonder wherein this lonely land we were to sleep tonight. In front of us were miles of distant mountains, but in no direction the slightest sign of human habitation. Soon we passed out of our channel into a lovely, strangely melancholy, lonely-looking lake. Lake Nkovi, my friends, tell me. It is exceedingly beautiful. The rich golden sunlight of the late afternoon soon followed by the short-lived, glorious flushes of colour of the sunset, and the afterglow play over the scene as we paddle across the lake to the north-northeast, our canoe leaving a long trail of frosted silver behind her as she glides over the mirror-like lake, and each stroke of the paddle sending down air with it to come up again in luminous silver bubbles, not as before in swirls of sand and mud. The lake shore is, in all directions, wreathed with nobly forested hills, indigo and purple in the dying daylight. On the north-northeast and northeast these come directly down into the lake. On northwest, north, southwest, and southeast there is a bend of well-forested ground behind which they rise. In the north and north-eastern part of the lake several exceedingly beautiful wooded islands show, with grey rocky beaches and dwarf cliffs. Signs of human habitation at first there were none, and in spite of its beauty there was something which I was almost going to say was repulsive. The man evidently felt the same as I did. Had anyone told me that the air that lay on the lake was poison, or that in among its forests lay some path to regions of utter death, I should have said, it looks like that. But no one said anything, and we only looked round uneasily until the comfortable-sold singlet made the unfortunate observation that he smelt blood. We all called him an utter fool to relieve our minds and made our way towards a second island. When we got near enough to it to see details, a large village showed among the trees on its summit, and a steep dwarf cliff overgrown with trees and creeping plants came down to a small beach covered with large water-washed grey stones. There was evidently some kind of a row going on in that village that took a lot of shouting, too. We made straight for the beach and drove our canoe among its outlying rocks, and then each of my men stowed his paddle quickly, slung on his ammunition bag, and picked up his ready-loaded gun, sliding the skin sheath off the lock. Pagan got out onto the stones alongside the canoe, just as the inhabitants became aware of our arrival, and, abandoning what I hope was a mass meeting to remonstrate with the local authorities on the insanitary state of the town, came a brown mass of naked humanity down the steep cliff path to attend to us whom they evidently regarded as an imperial interest. Things did not look restful, nor these fans personally pleasant. Every man among them, no woman showed, was armed with a gun, and they loosened their shovel-shaped knives in their sheaths as they came, evidently regarding a fight quite as eminent as we did. They drew up about twenty places from us in silence. Pagan and Grey Shirt, who had joined him, held out their unembarrassed hands, and shouted out the name of the fan-men they had said they were friendly with, kiva kiva. The fans stood still and talked angrily among themselves for some minutes, and then silence said to me, it would be bad palaver if kiva nolly for this place. In a tone that conveyed to me the idea he thought this unpleasant contingency almost a certainty. The passenger exhibited unmistakable symptoms of wishing he had come by another boat. I got up from my seat in the bottom of the canoe and leisurely strolled ashore, saying to the line of angry faces, mboloani, in an unconcerned way, although I well knew it was etiquette for them to salute first. They grunted but did not commit themselves further. A minute after they parted to allow a fine-looking middle-aged man, naked save for a twist of dirty cloth round his loins, and a bunch of leopard and wild cat-tails hung from his shoulder, by a strip of leopard skin to come forward. Pagan went for him with a rush, as if he were going to clasp him to his ample bosom, but holding his hands just off from touching the fan's shoulder in the usual way, while he said in fan, don't you know me, my beloved kiva, surely you have not forgotten your old friend. Kiva grunted feelingly and raised up his hands and held them just off touching Pagan, and we breathed again. Then Grayshirt made a rush at the crowd and went through great demonstrations of affection with another gentleman whom he recognized as being a fan-friend of his own, and whom he had not expected to meet here. I looked round to see if there were not any fan from the upper Ogoe, whom I knew to go for, but could not see one that I could on the strength of a previous acquaintance, and on their individual merits I did not feel inclined to do even in this fashionable imitation embrace. Indeed, I must say that never, even in a picture book have I seen such a set of wild, wicked-looking savages as those we faced this night, and with whom it was touch and go for twenty of the longest minutes I have ever lived, whether we fought for our lives, I was going to say, but it would not have been even for that, but merely for the price of them. Peace having been proclaimed, conversation became general. Grayshirt brought his friend up and introduced him to me, and wished shook hands and smiled at each other in the conventional way. Pagan's friend, who was next introduced, was more alarming, for he held his hands for half a minute just above my elbows without quite touching me, but he meant well, and then we all disappeared into a brown mass of humanity and a fog of noise. You would have thought from the violence and vehemence of the shouting and gesticulation that we were going to be forthwith torn to shreds, but not a single hand really touched me, and as I, Pagan and Grayshirt went up to the town in the midst of the throng, the crowd opened in front and closed in behind, evidently half-frightened at my appearance. The row when we reached the town redoubled in volume from the fact that the ladies, the children and the dogs joined in. Every child in the place, as soon as it saw my white face, led a howl out of it as if it had seen his satanic majesty, horns, hooves, tail and all, and fled into the nearest hut headlong, and I fear from the continuance of the screams had fits. The town was exceedingly filthy. The remains of the crocodile they had been eating the week before last, and piles of fish awful, and remains of an elephant, hippo or manatee, I really can't say which, decomposition was too far advanced, united to form a most impressive stench. The bark huts are, as usual in a fan town, in unbroken rows, but there are three or four streets here, not one only as in most cases. The paliver house is in the innermost street, and there we went, and noticed that the village view was not in the direction in which we had come, but across towards the other side of the lake. I told the Ajumba to explain we wanted hospitality for the night, and wished to hire three carriers for tomorrow to go with us to the Remboy. For an hour and three-quarters by my watch I stood in the suffocating smoky hot atmosphere, listening to, but only faintly understanding, the war of words and gesture that raged round us. At last the fact that we were to be received, being settled, Grey Shirt's friend led us out of the guard house, the crowd flinching back as I came through it, to his own house on the right hand side of the street of huts. It was a very different dwelling to Grey Shirt's residence at Arevuma. I was as high as its roof ridge, and had to stoop low to get through the door-hole. Inside the hut was fourteen or fifteen feet square, unlit by any window. The door-hole could be closed by pushing a broad piece of bark across it under two horizontally fixed bits of stick. The floor was sand, like the street outside, but dirtier. On it in one place was a fire, whose smoke found its way out through the roof. In one corner of the room was a rough bench of wood, which from the few filthy cloths on it and a wood pillow I saw was the bed. There was no other furniture in the hut save some boxes, which I presume held my host's earthly possessions. From the bamboo roof hung a long stick with hooks on it, the hooks made by cutting off branching twigs. This was evidently the hanging wardrobe, and on it hung some few fetish charms, and a beautiful ornament of wild cat and leopard tails tied on to a square piece of leopard skin, in the center of which was a little mirror, and round the mirror were sewn dozens of common shirt buttons. In among the tails hung three little brass bells and a brass rattle. These bells and rattles are not only for dandy, but serve to scare away snakes when the ornament is worn in the forest. A fine strip of silky-haired, young gorilla skin made the bend to sling the ornament from the shoulder when worn. Gorillas seem well enough known around here. On old lady in the crowd outside, I saw, had a necklace made of sixteen gorilla canine teeth slung on a pineapple fiber string. Grey shirt explained to me that this is the best house in the village, and my host, the most renowned elephant hunter in the district. We then returned to the canoe, whose occupants had been getting uneasy about the way affairs were going on top, on account of the uproar they heard in the time we had been away. We got into the canoe and took her round the little promontory at the end of the island to the other beach, which is the main beach. By arriving at the beach when we did, we took our fan friends in the rear, and they did not see us coming in the gloaming. This was all for the best, it seems, as they said they should have fired on us before they had had time to see we were rank outsiders, on the apprehension that we were coming from one of the fan towns we had passed, and with whom they were on bad terms regarding a lady who bolted there from her lawful lord, taking with her cautious soul a quantity of rubber. The only white man who had been here before in the memory of men was a French officer who paid Kiva six dollars to take him somewhere, I was told, but I could not find out when or what happened to that Frenchman. It was a long time ago, Kiva said, but these folks have no definite way of expressing duration of time, nor do I believe any great mental idea of it, although their ideas are, as usual, with West Africans far ahead of their language. All the goods were brought up to my hut, and while in Guta gets my tea, we started talking the carrier paliver again. The fans received my offer, starting at two dollars, ahead of what M. Jacotte said would be enough, with utter scorn, and every dramatic gesture of dissent. One man, pretending to catch grey shirts, words in his hands, flings them to the ground, and stamps them under his feet. I affected an easy take it or leave it manner and looked on. A woman came out of the crowd to me, and held out a mass of slimy grey abomination on a bit of plantain leaf. Smashed snail. I accepted it and gave her fish hooks. She was delighted, and her companions excited, so she put the hooks into her mouth for safe keeping. I hurriedly explained in my best fan that I do not require any more snail, so another lady tried the effect of a pineapple. There might be no end to this, so I retired into trade and asked what she would sell it for. She did not want to sell it, she wanted to give it me, so I gave her fish hooks. Silence and singlet interposed, saying the price for pineapples is one leaf of tobacco, but I explained I was not buying. N'Ghota turned up with my tea, so I went inside and had it on the bed. The door-hole was entirely filled, with a mosaic of faces, but no one attempted to come in. All the time the carrier, Palliver, went on with that cessation, and I went out and offered to take grey shirts and pagans' place, knowing they must want their chop, but they refused relief and also said I must not raise the price. I was offering too big a price now, and if I once rise the fan will only think I will keep on rising, and so make the Palliver longer to talk. How long does a Palliver usually take to talk around here? I asked. The last one I talked, says Pagan, took three weeks, and that was only a small price Palliver. Well, say I. My price is for a start tomorrow, after then I have no price, after that I go away. Another hour however sees the jam made, and to my surprise I find the three richest men in this town of Ampheta have personally taken up the contract. Kiva my host, Fika a fine young fellow and wiki, another noted elephant hunter. These three fans, the Forajumba, and the Igalwa in Gota I think will be enough. Moreover I fancy it safer not to have an overpowering percentage of fans in the party, as I know we shall have considerable stretches of uninhabited force to traverse, and the Ajumba say that the fans will kill people, i.e. the black traders who venture into their country, and cut them up into neat pieces, eat what they want at the time, and smoke the rest of the bodies for future use. Now I do not want to arrive at the Remboy in a smoked condition, even should my fragrance be neat, and I am going in a different direction to what I said I was when leaving Kangwe, and there are so many ways of accounting for death about here, leopard, canoe, cap size, elephants, etc., that even if I were traced, well nothing could be done then anyhow, so we'll only take three fans. One must diminish dead certainties to the level of sporting chances along here, or one can never get on. No one, either Ajumba or Fan, knew the exact course we were to take. The Ajumba had never been this way before, the way for black traders, across being via Lake Ishingo, the way Mr. Good of the American Mission once went, and the fans said they only knew the way to a big fan-town called Effua, where no white man or black trader had yet been. There is a path from there to the Remboy they knew, because they full of people take their trade all to the Remboy. They would, they said, come with me all the way if I would guarantee them safety, if they found war on the road. This I agreed to do, and arranged to pay off at Hayden and Cookson's sub-factory on the Remboy, and they have, look my mouth and it be sweet so palover done set. Every load then, by the light of the bush-lights held by the women, we arranged. I had to unpack my bottles of fishes, so as to equalize the weight of the loads. Every load is then made into a sort of cocoon with bush-rope. I was left in peace at about eleven-thirty p.m., and clearing off the cloths, from the bench through myself down and try to get some sleep, for we were to start, the fans said before dawn. Sleep impossible! Mosquitoes! Lice! So at twelve-forty I got up and slid aside my bark door. I found Pagan asleep under his mosquito-bar outside, across the doorway, but managed to get past him without rousing him from his dreams of palover, which he was still talking aloud and reconidered the town. The inhabitants seemed to have talked themselves quite out and were sleeping heavily. I went down then to our canoe, and found it safe, high up among the fan canoes on the stones, and then I slid a small fan canoe off, and taking a paddle from a cluster stuck in the sand, paddled out onto the dark lake. It was a wonderfully lovely quiet night, with no light save that from the stars. One immense planet shone preeminent in the purple sky, throwing a golden path down onto the still waters. Quantities of big fish sprung out of the water, their glistening silver-white scales flashing, so that they looked like slashing swords. Some bird was making a long, low, boom-booming sound away on the forest shore. I paddled leisurely across the lake to the shore on the right, and seeing crawling on the ground some large glowworms, drove the canoe onto the bank, among some hippograss, and got out to get them. While engaged on this hunt I felt the earth quiver under my feet, and I heard a soft, big, sewing sound, and looking around saw I had dropped in on a hippo banquet. I made out five of the immense brutes round me, so I softly returned to the canoe and shoved off, stealing along the bank, paddling under water until I deemed it safe to run out across the lake from my island. I reached the other end of it, to that on which the village is situated, and finding a miniature rocky bay, with a soft patch of sand and no hippograss, the incidence of the fan hut suggested, the visibility of a bath. Moreover there was no china collection in that hut, and it would be a long time before I got another chance, so I go ashore again and carefully investigating the neighborhood to make certain there were no human habitation near. I then indulged in a wash in peace. Drawing oneself on one's cumberbend is not pure joy, but it can be done when you put your mind to it. While I was finishing my toilette I saw a strange thing happen. Down through the forest on the lake bank opposite came a violet ball the size of a small orange. When it reached the sand beach it hovered along it to and fro close to the ground. In a few minutes another ball of similarly colored light came towards it from behind one of the islets, and the two waver to and fro over the beach, sometimes circling round each other. I made off towards them in the canoe thinking, as I still do they were some brand new kind of luminous insect. When I got onto their beach one of them went off into the bushes and the other away over the water. I followed in the canoe for the water here is very deep, and when I almost thought I had got it it went down into the water, and I could see it glowing as it sunk until it vanished in the depths. I made my way back hastily, fearing my absence with the canoe might give rise if discovered to trouble, and by three thirty I was back into hut safe but not so comfortable as I had been on the lake. A little before five my men are stirring and I get my tea. I do not state my escapade to them but ask what those lights were. Acom said the fan and pointing to the shore of the lake where I had been during the night they said they came there. It was an aku or devil bush. More than ever did I regret not having secured one of those sort of two phenomena. What a joy a real devil appropriately put up in raw alcohol would have been to my scientific friends. Wednesday, July 24th, we got away about five thirty the fans coming in a separate canoe. We called the next island to Amfeta to buy some more aguma. The inhabitants are very much interested in my appearance running along the stony beach as we paddle away and standing at the end of it until we are out of sight among the many islands at the north east end of Lake Inkovi. The scenery is savage. There are no terrific cliffs nor towering mountains to make it what one usually calls wild or romantic but there is a distinction about it which is all its own. This north east end has beautiful sand beaches on the southern side in front of the forested bank lying in smooth ribbons along the level shore and in scallops around the promontories where the hills come down into the lake. The forest on these hills or mountains where they are part of the Sierra del Cristal is very dark in color and the undergrowth seems scant. We presently come to a narrow but deep channel into the lake coming from this eastward which we go up winding our course with it into a valley between the hills. After going up it a little way we find it completely fenced across with stout stakes, a space being left open in the middle broader than the spaces between the other stakes and over this is poised a spear with a bush rope attached and weighted at the top of the heft with a great lump of rock. The whole affair is kept in position by a bush rope so arranged just under the level of the water that anything passing through the opening would bring the spear down. This was a trap for hippo or manatee Nganayimanga and similar in structure to those one sea set in the hippograss near villages and plantations which served the double purpose of defending the vegetable supply and adding to the meat supply of the inhabitants. We squeeze through between the stakes so as not to let the trap off and find our little river leads us into another lake much smaller than Inkovi. It is studded with islands of fantastic shapes all wooded with high trees of an equal level and with little or no undergrowth among them so their pale gray stems look like clusters of columns supporting a dark green ceiling. The forest comes down steep hillsides to the water edge in all directions and a dark gloomy looking herb grows up out of black slime and water in a bank of ribbon in front of it. There is another channel out of this lake still to the northeast. The fans say they think it goes into the big lake far far away i.e. Lake Isingo. From the look of the land I think this river connecting Isingo and Lake Inkovi wanders down this valley between the mountain spurs of the Sierra del Cristal expanding into one gloomy lake after another. We run our canoe into a bank of the dank dark colored water herb to the right and disembark into a fitting introduction to the sort of country we shall have to deal with before we see the Remboe, namely up to our knees in black slime. End of part two of chapter seven on the way from Kangwe to Lake Inkovi. Read by Kehinde of Bahatrack.com