I Gave
The Chief Some Tobacco Though He Never Begged For Anything.
He
accepted it thankfully, and handing it to his wives preceded us on
our path for about a mile and a half and then having reached the end
of his district, we shook hands and parted.
After all the rain we have had, the road was of course worse than
ever, and as we were going through the forest towards the war hedge,
I noticed a strange sound, a dull roar which made the light friable
earth quiver under our feet, and I remembered with alarm the
accounts Herr Liebert has given me of the strange ways of rivers on
this mountain; how by Buea, about 200 metres below where you cross
it, the river goes bodily down a hole. How there is a waterfall on
the south face of the mountain that falls right into another hole,
and is never seen again, any more than the Buea River is. How there
are in certain places underground rivers, which though never seen
can be heard roaring, and felt in the quivering earth under foot in
the wet season, and so on. So I judged our present roar arose from
some such phenomenon, and with feminine nervousness began to fear
that the rotten water-logged earth we were on might give way, and
engulf the whole of us, and we should never be seen again. But when
we got down into our next ravine, the one where I got the fish and
water-spiders on our way up, things explained themselves. The bed
of this ravine was occupied by a raging torrent of great beauty, but
alarming appearance to a person desirous of getting across to the
other side of it. On our right hand was a waterfall of tons of
water thirty feet high or so. The brown water wreathed with foam
dashed down into the swirling pool we faced, and at the other edge
of the pool, striking a ridge of higher rock, it flew up in a lovely
flange some twelve feet or so high, before making another and a
deeper spring to form a second waterfall. My men shouted to me
above the roar that it was "a bad place." They never give me half
the credit I deserve for seeing danger, and they said, "Water all go
for hole down there, we fit to go too suppose we fall." "Don't
fall," I yelled which was the only good advice I could think of to
give them just then.
Each small load had to be carried across by two men along a
submerged ridge in the pool, where the water was only breast high.
I had all I could do to get through it, though assisted by my
invaluable Bakwiri staff. But no harm befell. Indeed we were all
the better for it, or at all events cleaner. We met five torrents
that had to be waded during the day; none so bad as the first but
all superbly beautiful.
When we turned our faces westwards just above the wood we had to
pass through before getting into the great road, the view of
Victoria, among its hills, and fronted by its bay, was divinely
lovely and glorious with colour. I left the boys here, as they
wanted to rest, and to hunt up water, etc., among the little cluster
of huts that are here on the right-hand side of the path, and I went
on alone down through the wood, and out on to the road, where I
found my friend, the Alsatian engineer, still flourishing and busy
with his cheery gang of woodcutters. I made a brief halt here,
getting some soda water. I was not anxious to reach Victoria before
nightfall, but yet to reach it before dinner, and while I was
chatting, my boys came through the wood and the engineer most kindly
gave them a tot of brandy apiece, to which I owe their arrival in
Victoria. I left them again resting, fearing I had overdone my
arrangements for arriving just after nightfall and went on down that
road which was more terrible than ever now to my bruised, weary
feet, but even more lovely than ever in the dying light of the
crimson sunset, with all its dark shadows among the trees begemmed
with countless fire-flies - and so safe into Victoria - sneaking up
the Government House hill by the private path through the Botanical
Gardens.
Idabea, the steward, turned up, and I asked him to let me have some
tea and bread and butter, for I was dreadfully hungry. He rushed
off, and I heard tremendous operations going on in the room above.
In a few seconds water poured freely down through the dining-room
ceiling. It was bath palaver again. The excellent Idabea evidently
thought it was severely wanted, more wanted than such vanities as
tea. Fortunately, Herr von Lucke was away down in town, looking
after duty as usual, so I was tidy before he returned to dinner.
When he returned he had the satisfaction a prophet should feel. I
had got half-drowned, and I had got an awful cold, the most awful
cold in the head of modern times, I believe, but he was not
artistically exultant over my afflictions.
My men having all reported themselves safe I went to my comfortable
rooms, but could not turn in, so fascinating was the warmth and
beauty down here; and as I sat on the verandah overlooking Victoria
and the sea, in the dim soft light of the stars, with the fire-flies
round me, and the lights of Victoria away below, and heard the soft
rush of the Lukola River, and the sound of the sea-surf on the
rocks, and the tom-tomming and singing of the natives, all matching
and mingling together, "Why did I come to Africa?" thought I. Why!
who would not come to its twin brother hell itself for all the
beauty and the charm of it!
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