The Pure Rubber, When It Is Made, Looks Like Putty, And Has The Same
Dusky-White Colour; But, Owing To
The balls being kept in the huts
in baskets in the smoke, and in wicker-work cages in the muddy
Pools
to soak up as much water as possible before going into the hands of
the traders, they get almost inky in colour.
CHAPTER IX. FROM ESOON TO AGONJO.
In which the Voyager sets forth the beauties of the way from Esoon
to N'dorko, and gives some account of the local Swamps.
Our next halting place was Esoon, which received us with the usual
row, but kindly enough; and endeared itself to me by knowing the
Rembwe, and not just waving the arm in the air, in any direction,
and saying "Far, far plenty bad people live for that side," as the
other towns had done. Of course they stuck to the bad people part
of the legend; but I was getting quite callous as to the moral
character of new acquaintances, feeling sure that for good solid
murderous rascality several of my old Fan acquaintances, and even my
own party, would take a lot of beating; and yet, one and all, they
had behaved well to me. Esoon gave me to understand that of all the
Sodoms and Gomorrahs that town of Egaja was an easy first, and it
would hardly believe we had come that way. Still Egaja had dealt
with us well. However I took less interest - except, of course, as a
friend, in some details regarding the criminal career of Chief Blue-
hat of Egaja - in the opinion of Esoon regarding the country we had
survived, than in the information it had to impart regarding the
country we had got to survive on our way to the Big River, which now
no longer meant the Ogowe, but the Rembwe. I meant to reach one of
Hatton and Cookson's sub-factories there, but - strictly between
ourselves - I knew no more at what town that factory was than a
Kindergarten Board School child does. I did not mention this fact;
and a casual observer might have thought that I had spent my youth
in that factory, when I directed my inquiries to the finding out the
very shortest route to it. Esoon shook its head. "Yes, it was
close, but it was impossible to reach Uguma's factory." "Why?"
"There was blood war on the path." I said it was no war of mine.
But Esoon said, such was the appalling depravity of the next town on
the road, that its inhabitants lay in wait at day with loaded guns
and shot on sight any one coming up the Esoon road, and that at
night they tied strings with bells on across the road and shot on
hearing them. No one had been killed since the first party of
Esoonians were fired on at long range, because no one had gone that
way; but the next door town had been heard by people who had been
out in the bush at night, blazing down the road when the bells were
tinkled by wild animals.
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