We Double Round A Corner By The Stockade Of The Station's
Plantation, And Are At The Top Of The Mud Glissade - The New
Government Path, I Should Say - That Leads Down Into The Barrack-
Yard.
Our arrival brings Herr Liebert promptly on the scene, as kindly
helpful and energetic as ever, and again anxious for me to have a
bath.
The men bring our saturated loads into my room, and after
giving them their food and plenty of tobacco, I get my hot tea and
change into the clothes I had left behind at Buea, and feeling once
more fit for polite society, go out and find his Imperial and Royal
Majesty's representative making a door, tightening the boards up
with wedges in a very artful and professional way. We discourse on
things in general and the mountain in particular. The great south-
east face is now showing clear before us, the clearness that usually
comes before night-fall. It looks again a vast wall, and I wish I
were going up it again to-morrow. When "the Calabar major" set it
on fire in the dry season it must have been a noble sight.
The north-eastern edge of the slope of the mountain seems to me
unbroken up to the peak. The great crater we went and camped in
must be a very early one in the history of the mountain, and out of
it the present summit seems to have been thrown up. From the sea
face, the western, I am told the slope is continuous on the whole,
although there are several craters on that side; seventy craters all
told are so far known on Mungo.
The last reported eruption was in 1852, when signs of volcanic
activity were observed by a captain who was passing at sea. The
lava from this eruption must have gone down the western side, for I
have come across no fresh lava beds in my wanderings on the other
face. Herr Liebert has no confidence in the mountain whatsoever,
and announces his intention of leaving Buea with the army on the
first symptom of renewed volcanic activity. I attempt to discourage
him from this energetic plan, pointing out to him the beauty of that
Roman soldier at Pompeii who was found, centuries after that
eruption, still at his post; and if he regards that as merely
mechanical virtue, why not pursue the plan of the elder Pliny? Herr
Liebert planes away at his door, and says it's not in his orders to
make scientific observations on volcanoes in a state of eruption.
When it is he'll do so - until it is, he most decidedly will not. He
adds Pliny was an admiral and sailors are always as curious as cats.
Buea seems a sporting place for weather even without volcanic
eruptions, during the whole tornado season (there are two a year),
over-charged tornadoes burst in the barrack yard. From the 14th of
June till the 27th of August you never see the sun, because of the
terrific and continuous wet season downpour. At the beginning and
end of this cheerful period occurs a month's tornado season, and the
rest of the year is dry, hot by day and cold by night.
They are talking of making Buea into a sanatorium for the fever-
stricken. I do not fancy somehow that it's a suitable place for a
man who has got all the skin off his nerves with fever and quinine,
and is very liable to chill; but all Governments on the Coast,
English, German, or French, are stark mad on the subject of
sanatoriums in high places, though the experience they have had of
them has clearly pointed out that they are valueless in West Africa,
and a man's one chance is to get out to sea on a ship that will take
him outside the three-mile-deep fever-belt of the coast.
Herr Liebert gives me some interesting details about the first
establishment of the station here and a bother he had with the
plantations. Only a short time ago the soldiers brought him in some
black wood spikes, which they had found with their feet, set into
the path leading to the station's koko plantations, to the end of
laming the men. On further investigation there were also found
pits, carefully concealed with sticks and leaves, and the bottoms
lined with bad thorns, also with malicious intent. The local
Bakwiri chiefs were called in and asked to explain these phenomena
existing in a country where peace had been concluded, and the chiefs
said it was quite a mistake, those things had not been put there to
kill soldiers, but only to attract their attention, to kill and
injure their own fellow-tribesmen who had been stealing from
plantations latterly. That's the West African's way entirely all
along the Coast; the "child-like" native will turn out and shoot you
with a gun to attract your attention to the fact that a tribe you
never heard of has been and stolen one of his ladies, whom you never
saw. It's the sweet infant's way of "rousing up popular opinion,"
but I do not admire or approve of it. If I am to be shot for a
crime, for goodness sake let me commit the crime first.
September 28th. - Down to Victoria in one day, having no desire to
renew and amplify my acquaintance with the mission station at Buana.
It poured torrentially all the day through. The old chief at Buana
was very nice to-day when we were coming through his territory. He
came out to meet us with some of his wives. Both men and women
among these Bakwiri are tattooed, and also painted, on the body,
face and arms, but as far as I have seen not on the legs. The
patterns are handsome, and more elaborate than any such that I have
seen. One man who came with the party had two figures of men
tattooed on the region where his waistcoat should have been.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 159 of 190
Words from 161932 to 162943
of 194943
