The Sandbanks Stretch Across The
River Here Nearly Awash, So All Our Cargo Of Yams Has To Be Thrown
Overboard On To The Sand, From Which They Can Be Collected By Being
Waded Out To.
The canoe, thus lightened, is able to go on a little
further, but we are soon hard and fast
Again, and the crew have to
jump out and shove her off about once every five minutes, and then
to look lively about jumping back into her again, as she shoots over
the cliffs of the sandbanks.
When we reach Arevooma, I find it is a very prettily situated town,
on the left-hand bank of the river - clean and well kept, and
composed of houses built on the Igalwa and M'pongwe plan with walls
of split bamboo and a palm thatch roof. I own I did not much care
for these Ajumbas on starting, but they are evidently going to be
kind and pleasant companions. One of them is a gentlemanly-looking
man, who wears a gray shirt; another looks like a genial Irishman
who has accidentally got black, very black; he is distinguished by
wearing a singlet; another is a thin, elderly man, notably silent;
and the remaining one is a strapping, big fellow, as black as a
wolf's mouth, of gigantic muscular development, and wearing
quantities of fetish charms hung about him. The two first mentioned
are Christians; the other two pagans, and I will refer to them by
their characteristic points, for their honourable names are awfully
alike when you do hear them, and, as is usual with Africans, rarely
used in conversation.
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