Anxiety displayed by
navigators, sounding taken on both sides of the bows with long
bamboo poles painted in stripes,
And we go "slow ahead" and "hard
astern" successfully, until we get round a good-sized island, and
there we stick until four o'clock, high water, when we come off all
right, and steam triumphantly but cautiously into the Ogowe. The
shores of Nazareth Bay are fringed with mangroves, but once in the
river the scenery soon changes, and the waters are walled on either
side with a forest rich in bamboo, oil and wine-palms. These forest
cliffs seem to rise right up out of the mirror-like brown water.
Many of the highest trees are covered with clusters of brown-pink
young shoots that look like flowers, and others are decorated by my
old enemy the climbing palm, now bearing clusters of bright crimson
berries. Climbing plants of other kinds are wreathing everything,
some blossoming with mauve, some with yellow, some with white
flowers, and every now and then a soft sweet heavy breath of
fragrance comes out to us as we pass by. There is a native village
on the north bank, embowered along its plantations with some very
tall cocoa-palms rising high above them.
The river winds so that it seems to close in behind us, opening out
in front fresh vistas of superb forest beauty, with the great brown
river stretching away unbroken ahead like a broad road of burnished
bronze.
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