My Ajumba, However, Know About My Ngambi And The Vinue All
Right And Eliva Z'Ayzingo, So I Must Try And Get Cross Bearings From
These.
We have an addition to our crew this morning - a man who wants to go
and get work at John Holt's sub-factory away on the Rembwe.
He has
been waiting a long while at Arevooma, unable to get across, I am
told, because the road is now stopped between Ayzingo and the Rembwe
by "those fearful Fans." "How are we going to get through that
way?" says I, with natural feminine alarm. "We are not, sir," says
Gray Shirt. This is what Lady MacDonald would term a chatty little
incident; and my hair begins to rise as I remember what I have been
told about those Fans and the indications I have already seen of its
being true when on the Upper Ogowe. Now here we are going to try to
get through the heart of their country, far from a French station,
and without the French flag. Why did I not obey Mr. Hudson's orders
not to go wandering about in a reckless way! Anyhow I am in for it,
and Fortune favours the brave. The only question is: Do I
individually come under this class? I go into details. It seems
Pagan thinks he can depend on the friendship of two Fans he once met
and did business with, and who now live on an island in Lake Ncovi -
Ncovi is not down on my map and I have never heard of it before -
anyhow thither we are bound now.
Each man has brought with him his best gun, loaded to the muzzle,
and tied on to the baggage against which I am leaning - the muzzles
sticking out each side of my head: the flint locks covered with
cases, or sheaths, made of the black-haired skins of gorillas,
leopard skin, and a beautiful bright bay skin, which I do not know,
which they say is bush cow - but they call half a dozen things bush
cow. These guns are not the "gas-pipes" I have seen up north; but
decent rifles which have had the rifling filed out and the locks
replaced by flint locks and converted into muzzle loaders, and many
of them have beautiful barrels. I find the Ajumba name for the
beautiful shrub that has long bunches of red, yellow and cream-
coloured young leaves at the end of its branches is "obaa." I also
learn that in their language ebony and a monkey have one name. The
forest on either bank is very lovely. Some enormously high columns
of green are formed by a sort of climbing plant having taken
possession of lightning-struck trees, and in one place it really
looks exactly as if some one had spread a great green coverlet over
the forest, so as to keep it dry. No high land showing in any
direction. Pagan tells me the extinguisher-shaped juju filled with
medicine and made of iron is against drowning - the red juju is "for
keep foot in path." Beautiful effect of a gleam of sunshine
lighting up a red sandbank till it glows like the Nibelungen gold.
Indeed the effects are Turneresque to-day owing to the mist, and the
sun playing in and out among it.
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