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.
The banks of the Ogowe just above Lembarene Island are low; with the
forest only broken by village clearings and seeming to press in on
those, ready to absorb them should the inhabitants cease their war
against it. The blue Ntyankala mountains of Achango land show away
to the E.S.E. in a range.
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