Most Of Us
Arrived Into Deep Channels Of Water Which Here And There Cut In
Between This Rock Reef And The Bank, M'bo Was The First To Find The
Way Into Certainty; He Was, And I Hope Still Is, A Perfect Wonder At
This Sort Of Work.
I kept close to M'bo, and when we got to the
shore, the rest of the wanderers being collected, we said "chances
are there's a village round here"; and started to find it.
After a
gay time in a rock-encumbered forest, growing in a tangled, matted
way on a rough hillside, at an angle of 45 degrees, M'bo sighted the
gleam of fires through the tree stems away to the left, and we bore
down on it, listening to its drum. Viewed through the bars of the
tree stems the scene was very picturesque. The village was just a
collection of palm mat-built huts, very low and squalid. In its
tiny street, an affair of some sixty feet long and twenty wide, were
a succession of small fires. The villagers themselves, however,
were the striking features in the picture. They were painted
vermilion all over their nearly naked bodies, and were dancing
enthusiastically to the good old rump-a-tump-tump-tump tune, played
energetically by an old gentleman on a long, high-standing, white-
and-black painted drum. They said that as they had been dancing
when we arrived they had failed to hear us. M'bo secured a - well, I
don't exactly know what to call it - for my use.
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