I Wanted To Have Them Rubbed With Palm Oil, But I
Found, To My Surprise, That There Was No Palm
Oil to be had, the
tree being absent, or scarce in this region, so I had to content
myself with
Having them rubbed with a piece of animal fat instead.
I chaperoned my men, while among the ladies of Esoon - a forward set
of minxes - with the vigilance of a dragon; and decreed, like the
Mikado of Japan, "that whosoever leered or winked, unless
connubially linked, should forthwith be beheaded," have their pay
chopped, I mean; and as they were beginning to smell their pay, they
were careful; and we got through Esoon without one of them going
into jail; no mean performance when you remember that every man had
a past - to put it mildly.
Esoon is not situated like the other towns, with a swamp and the
forest close round it; but it is built on the side of a fairly
cleared ravine among its plantain groves. When you are on the
southern side of the ravine, you can see Esoon looking as if it were
hung on the hillside before you. You then go through a plantation
down into the little river, and up into the town - one long, broad,
clean-kept street. Leaving Esoon you go on up the hill through
another plantation to the summit. Immediately after leaving the
town we struck westwards; and when we got to the top of the next
hill we had a view that showed us we were dealing with another type
of country. The hills to the westward are lower, and the valleys
between them broader and less heavily forested, or rather I should
say forested with smaller sorts of timber. All our paths took us
during the early part of the day up and down hills, through swamps
and little rivers, all flowing Rembwe-wards. About the middle of
the afternoon, when we had got up to the top of a high hill, after
having had a terrible time on a timber fall of the first magnitude,
into which four of us had fallen, I of course for one, I saw a sight
that made my heart stand still. Stretching away to the west and
north, winding in and out among the feet of the now isolated mound-
like mountains, was that never to be mistaken black-green forest
swamp of mangrove; doubtless the fringe of the River Rembwe, which
evidently comes much further inland than the mangrove belt on the
Ogowe. This is reasonable and as it should be, though it surprised
me at the time; for the great arm of the sea which is called the
Gaboon is really a fjord, just like Bonny and Opobo rivers, with
several rivers falling into it at its head, and this fjord brings
the sea water further inland. In addition to this the two rivers,
the 'Como (Nkama) and Rembwe that fall into this Gaboon, with
several smaller rivers, both bring down an inferior quantity of
fresh water, and that at nothing like the tearing, tide-beating back
pace of the Ogowe.
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