Concerning the way in which the voyager goes from the island of
M'fetta to no one knows exactly where, in doubtful and bad company,
and of what this led to and giving also some accounts of the Great
Forest and of those people that live therein.
I will not bore you with my diary in detail regarding our land
journey, because the water-washed little volume attributive to this
period is mainly full of reports of law cases, for reasons
hereinafter to be stated; and at night, when passing through this
bit of country, I was usually too tired to do anything more than
make an entry such as: "5 S., 4 R. A., N.E Ebony. T. 1-50, etc.,
etc." - entries that require amplification to explain their
significance, and I will proceed to explain.
Our first day's march was a very long one. Path in the ordinary
acceptance of the term there was none. Hour after hour, mile after
mile, we passed on, in the under-gloom of the great forest. The
pace made by the Fans, who are infinitely the most rapid Africans I
have ever come across, severely tired the Ajumba, who are canoe men,
and who had been as fresh as paint, after their exceedingly long
day's paddling from Arevooma to M'fetta. Ngouta, the Igalwa
interpreter, felt pumped, and said as much, very early in the day.
I regretted very much having brought him; for, from a mixture of
nervous exhaustion arising from our M'fetta experiences, and a touch
of chill he had almost entirely lost his voice, and I feared would
fall sick. The Fans were evidently quite at home in the forest, and
strode on over fallen trees and rocks with an easy, graceful stride.
What saved us weaklings was the Fans' appetites; every two hours
they sat down, and had a snack of a pound or so of meat and aguma
apiece, followed by a pipe of tobacco. We used to come up with them
at these halts. Ngouta and the Ajumba used to sit down, and rest
with them, and I also, for a few minutes, for a rest and chat, and
then I would go on alone, thus getting a good start. I got a good
start, in the other meaning of the word, on the afternoon of the
first day when descending into a ravine.
I saw in the bottom, wading and rolling in the mud, a herd of five
elephants. I remembered, hastily, that your one chance when charged
by several elephants is to dodge them round trees, working down wind
all the time, until they lose smell and sight of you, then to lie
quiet for a time, and go home. It was evident from the utter
unconcern of these monsters that I was down wind now, so I had only
to attend to dodging, and I promptly dodged round a tree, and lay
down. Seeing they still displayed no emotion on my account, and
fascinated by the novelty of the scene, I crept forward from one
tree to another, until I was close enough to have hit the nearest
one with a stone, and spats of mud, which they sent flying with
their stamping and wallowing came flap, flap among the bushes
covering me.
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