We Pass A Long Tunnel In
The Bush, Quite Dark As You Look Down It - Evidently The Path To Some
Native Town.
The south bank is covered, where the falling waters
have exposed it, with hippo grass.
Terrible lot of mangrove flies
about, although we are more than one hundred miles above the
mangrove belt. River broad again - tending W.S.W., with a broad
flattened island with attributive sandbanks in the middle. The fair
way is along the south bank of the river. Gray Shirt tells me this
river is called the O'Rembo Vongo, or small River, so as to
distinguish it from the main stream of the Ogowe which goes down
past the south side of Lembarene Island, as well I know after that
canoe affair of mine. Ayzingo now bears due north - and native
mahogany is called "Okooma." Pass village called Welli on north
bank. It looks like some gipsy caravans stuck on poles. I expect
that village has known what it means to be swamped by the rising
river; it looks as if it had, very hastily in the middle of some
night, taken to stilts, which I am sure, from their present rickety
condition, will not last through the next wet season, and then some
unfortunate spirit will get the blame of the collapse. I also learn
that it is the natal spot of my friend Kabinda, the carpenter at
Andande. Now if some of these good people I know would only go and
distinguish themselves, I might write a sort of county family
history of these parts; but they don't, and I fancy won't. For
example, the entrance - or should I say the exit?
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