At Almost Every Village That We Pass - And They Are Frequent After
The Fallaba - There Is An Ostentatious Display Of Firewood Deposited
Either On The Bank, Or On Piles Driven Into The Mud In Front Of It,
Mutely Saying In Their Uncivilised Way, "Try Our Noted Chunks:
Best
value for money" - (that is to say, tobacco, etc.), to the Move or
any other little steamer that may happen to come along hungry for
fuel.
We stayed a few minutes this afternoon at Ashchyouka, where there
came off to us in a canoe an enterprising young Frenchman who has
planted and tended a coffee plantation in this out-of-the-way
region, and which is now, I am glad to hear, just coming into
bearing. After leaving Ashchyouka, high land showed to the N.E.,
and at 5.15, without evident cause to the uninitiated, the Move took
to whistling like a liner. A few minutes later a factory shows up
on the hilly north bank, which is Woermann's; then just beyond and
behind it we see the Government Post; then Hatton and Cookson's
factory, all in a line. Opposite Hatton and Cookson's there was a
pretty little stern-wheel steamer nestling against the steep clay
bank of Lembarene Island when we come in sight, but she instantly
swept out from it in a perfect curve, which lay behind her marked in
frosted silver on the water as she dropt down river. I hear now she
was the Eclaireur, the stern-wheeler which runs up and down the
Ogowe in connection with the Chargeurs Reunis Company, subsidised by
the Government, and when the Move whistled, she was just completing
taking on 3,000 billets of wood for fuel.
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