I Camped Out That Night In M. Jacot's Study, Wondering How He Would
Like It When He Came Home And Found Me There; For He Was Now Away On
One Of His Usual Evangelising Tours.
Providentially Mme.
Jacot let
me have the room that the girls belonging to the mission school
usually slept in, to my great relief, before M. Jacot came home.
I will not weary you with my diary during my first stay at Kangwe.
It is a catalogue of the collection of fish, etc., that I made, and
a record of the continuous, never-failing kindness and help that I
received from M. and Mme. Jacot, and of my attempts to learn from
them the peculiarities of the region, the natives, and their
language and customs, which they both know so well and manage so
admirably. I daily saw there what it is possible to do, even in the
wildest and most remote regions of West Africa, and recognised that
there is still one heroic form of human being whose praise has never
adequately been sung, namely, the missionary's wife.
Wishing to get higher up the Ogowe, I took the opportunity of the
river boat of the Chargeurs Reunis going up to the Njole on one of
her trips, and joined her.
June 22nd. - Eclaireur, charming little stern wheel steamer,
exquisitely kept. She has an upper and a lower deck. The lower
deck for business, the upper deck for white passengers only. On the
upper deck there is a fine long deck-house, running almost her whole
length. In this are the officers' cabins, the saloon and the
passengers' cabins (two), both large and beautifully fitted up.
Captain Verdier exceedingly pleasant and constantly saying "N'est-ce
pas?" A quiet and singularly clean engineer completes the white
staff.
The passengers consist of Mr. Cockshut, going up river to see after
the sub-factories; a French official bound for Franceville, which it
will take him thirty-six days, go as quick as he can, in a canoe
after Njole; a tremendously lively person who has had black water
fever four times, while away in the bush with nothing to live on but
manioc, a diet it would be far easier to die on under the
circumstances. He is excellent company; though I do not know a word
he says, he is perpetually giving lively and dramatic descriptions
of things which I cannot but recognise. M. S - -, with his pince-
nez, the Doctor, and, above all, the rapids of the Ogowe, rolling
his hands round and round each other and clashing them forward with
a descriptive ejaculation of "Whish, flash, bum, bum, bump," and
then comes what evidently represents a terrific fight for life
against terrific odds. Wish to goodness I knew French, for wishing
to see these rapids, I cannot help feeling anxious and worried at
not fully understanding this dramatic entertainment regarding them.
There is another passenger, said to be the engineer's brother, a
quiet, gentlemanly man. Captain argues violently with every one;
with Mr. Cockshut on the subject of the wicked waste of money in
keeping the Move and not shipping all goods by the Eclaireur,
"N'est-ce pas?" and with the French official on goodness knows what,
but I fancy it will be pistols for two and coffee for one in the
morning time. When the captain feels himself being worsted in
argument, he shouts for support to the engineer and his brother.
"N'est-ce pas?" he says, turning furiously to them. "Oui, oui,
certainement," they say dutifully and calmly, and then he, refreshed
by their support, dashes back to his controversial fray. He even
tries to get up a row with me on the subject of the English
merchants at Calabar, whom he asserts have sworn a kind of blood
oath to ship by none but British and African Company's steamers. I
cannot stand this, for I know my esteemed and honoured friends the
Calabar traders would ship by the Flying Dutchman or the Devil
himself if either of them would take the stuff at 15 shillings the
ton. We have, however, to leave off this row for want of language,
to our mutual regret, for it would have been a love of a fight.
Soon after leaving Lembarene Island, we pass the mouth of the chief
southern affluent of the Ogowe, the Ngunie; it flows in
unostentatiously from the E.S.E., a broad, quiet river here with low
banks and two islands (Walker's Islands) showing just off its
entrance. Higher up, it flows through a mountainous country, and at
Samba, its furthest navigable point, there is a wonderfully
beautiful waterfall, the whole river coming down over a low cliff,
surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains. It takes the Eclaireur
two days steaming from the mouth of the Ngunie to Samba, when she
can get up; but now, in the height of the long dry season neither
she nor the Move can go because of the sandbanks; so Samba is cut
off until next October. Hatton and Cookson have factories up at
Samba, for it is an outlet for the trade of Achango land in rubber
and ivory, a trade worked by the Akele tribe, a powerful, savage and
difficult lot to deal with, and just in the same condition, as far
as I can learn, as they were when Du Chaillu made his wonderful
journeys among them. While I was at Lembarene, waiting for the
Eclaireur, a notorious chief descended on a Ngunie sub-factory, and
looted it. The wife of the black trading agent made a gallant
resistance, her husband was away on a trading expedition, but the
chief had her seized and beaten, and thrown into the river. An
appeal was made to the Doctor then Administrator of the Ogowe, a
powerful and helpful official, and he soon came up with the little
canoniere, taking Mr. Cockshut with him and fully vindicated the
honour of the French flag, under which all factories here are.
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