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." "Good-bye,
Susannah, don't you weep for me," I courteously 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 main line. I got it at last - a projecting spit of land
from the island with 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 Kangwe branch
of the Ogowe by a connecting creek, and after an hour's 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 Lembarene
Island is the most inhabited. A path round the upper part of the
island passes through a succession of Igalwa villages and by the
Roman Catholic missionary station. The slave villages belonging to
these Igalwas 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 Igalwa, like the Dualla of Cameroons, have their
slaves in separate villages; but this is the case, though I do not
know the reason of it. These Igalwa 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 gorillas on the island, but it has a peculiar and awful
house ant, much smaller than the driver ant, 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 Lembarene Island,
although flourishing destructively on the mainland banks of the
river in this locality. I was never tired of going and watching
those Igalwa villagers, nor were, I think, the Igalwa villagers ever
tired of observing me.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 109 of 371
Words from 56839 to 57350
of 194943
